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This archive page covers approximately the dates between Aug 23, 2004, and Jul 31, 2005.
Is there any one here veiwing this page who has seen the goofy stuff on the internet that their saying about therianthropes i saw this one that said that there is no difference between lycanthropes and therianthropes i was so pissed, and they we the kind of poeple who thought lycanthropes were actual werewolves! i was so pissed they didn't even have a chat room to bitch them out on!!!
-very angry-
Alot of people miss interpret what a therianthrope is they don't even know what a lycanthrope is most of the time so i am here to end the confussion.
therianthrope, a personal belief were he or she believes they have the spirit of an animal inside them, they (being a therianthrope myself) undergo a mental shift Italic textNOT PHYSICAL!!!!Italic text and durring that shift they have sharp hearing accute scences and clearer vission, but i feel its unfair to us as therianthropes to not be able to do what our hearts desire for me thats run and play in the falling snow, feel my paws in the rain soaked dirt, and i can't do that because of societies expectaions of NORMAL.
honestly, who could mistake these two subjects as being the same? lycanthropy is a medical state, not a sipritual, or like the smaller number of people who believe in therianthropy,psycological state, like so many of them believe. just do a search for Therianthropy on any search engone, they will all clarify this subject much better then i can.
-Cory
your thinking of lyncanthropy as ther medical state. a common error.
Gabrielsimon 21:41, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
sorry, its Cory again, just wanting to say, that being a Therianthrope, I think that the vast majority of these people out there DO NOT believe that this is only a mental shift, as is clearly stated. for gods sake people, if you want that, check the section on LYCANTHROPY, thats a completely different thing, so check that out if you need further clarification.
I have problem with the objectivity of this comment:
"However, there is a strong, though ill-defined, notion that a therianthrope is one who feels they are the animal inside, rather than having an external connection such as a totem or spirit guide, and those who claim external connections are sometimes shunned as fakers."
It seems that the issue of totem animals is more popular in some communities than others. Everyone seems to have different ideas about the popularity of certain beliefs with therians and otherkin. Personally, I have never heard of anyone being looked down upon for believing they had a totem or a spirit guide. Nor do we have to conceptualize this whole thing in the typical internal/external binary; a spirit guide or totem, though it may be an independent entity, could still be a core part of a therian's identity. Putrescent stench 20:10, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Eequor, please stop reverting this article. I have added factual information about the historical use of the name, as Webster's dictionary defines it, as described in the werewolf article, and as used in folklore. Having the entire article be nothing but information on a modern subculture/religious faith who believes that they have wolf (or cat or dog or whatever) souls in them would be like blanking the entire vampire article and replacing it with information about modern day fringe groups who believe that they are undead. I think it's pretty over the top for you to blindly revert the article and then label it as "attempts to insert POV material" on the requests for comment page. All I am attempting to do is get neutral information about the actual meaning of the word into the article instead of just the views of a subculture that is trying to appropriate the word to their own ends. This has nothing to do with POV. DreamGuy 07:57, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
OK, recent restructuring just went and made the problem we corrected earlier worse... It's now sectioned out but the sections that used to be about the accurate, historical and folklore meaning of the word have been changed to the meaning invented by the modern subculture and the bits about the accurate meaning have been fractured, split up and strewn here and there so it makes no sense. DreamGuy 16:20, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)
2 articles isn't really needed, if it can be split into 2 articles it can be split into 2 sections in one article. But with respect, I think DreamGuy is wrong. a subculture is a part of a culture - a group of people, their social and modes of interaction, etc (see subculture). It is possible for a person to self identify as therian on the basis that they (for example) feel they have an animals soul, and not be part of or within the subculture. So you haven't got "scholarly" vs. "subculture", but "scholarly" vs. "modern uses" -- sub culture (ie the subculture adopted or entered into by those who self identify as therian) is a logically separate matter. I have tried to address this by leaving your organisation, but tweaking the titles of the section so that instead of being called "subculture" it is called "modern subculture uses", which is accurate, with "subculture" then a section within that which describes the subculture itself. FT2 12:29, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)
Subculture certainly works, as the subheading has it, but fringe I think is more specific and a way of varying the terms.
Subculture: "In sociology, a subculture is a culture or set of people with distinct behavior and beliefs within a larger culture. "
Fringe: "By extension, any cultural manifestation not in the mainstream can be said to be on the fringe."
Fringe is more precise, as it's not in the mainstream. Subculture is a term for any sort of group. Therians are very definitely fringe, simply as objective reality. DreamGuy 17:57, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
Don't really mind me, I am only here to say that the greek word "theros" means "summer" and that "therion" is the word you're looking for. I edited it.
Who is that went back through the page and changed "non-human animal" into "animal" in several places? It took a great deal of time to go through the article and add in "non-human" in order to correct repetitive implications that humans and "animals" are different entities. The word animal includes humans. Saying something like "some human traits, and some animal traits" is like saying that a dog has "some canine traits, and some mammalian traits". If something is a human trait, then that automatically makes it an animal trait as well.
I suspect this was an act of vandalism by some religious person who believes that humans aren't animals. Yet the word "animal" comes from the Latin anima, meaning "spirit, soul, or breath of life". It is defined by the very things that such religious types think humans possess which other animals do not. Thus, saying that a human is "not an animal" is essentially the same as talking about round squares and portable holes. It's completely non-sensical.
I'm reverting the page. -- Corvun 03:37, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
that would be user:DreamGuy Gabrielsimon 03:52, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
how could you say that with a straight face? Gabrielsimon 05:37, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
Looking this article over, it seems to have a number of instances of sentences where the NPoV principle is violated. In particular, that but about mental illness near the beginning is singularily blatant. Although this article is not entirely offensive, I feel that it is absurd to regard these people as though they were in fact insane (which they quite arguably are not). A significant reworking of this page is required in order to remove the bias that this line of thinking is in fact complete nonsense. Some citations would also be nice. Falcon 16:43, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
Should the page contain examples? I am thinking about for instance this tiger guy that has got fangs operated onto him. I think he's quite famous. 惑乱 分からん 21:30, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Doesn't "therion" more accurately mean "beast" than "wild animal"? -- Arny 03:33, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Can someone please, please, explain to me what the difference is between (spiritual) therianthropy and otherkin. I'm so confused. :-( 86.142.179.66 21:26, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Heh, you have reason to be confused. Generally, Otherkin relate to mythological beings; Therians relate to animals that do exit or have existed. The main observable difference is that Otherkin usually claim to be Otherkin whereas many Therians refuse the appelation. Nevertheless, various Ortherkin are more likely to socialize than Therians with Otherkin. In other words, the Otherkin community and the Therian community tend to be distinctly separated.
It's interesting that you have four "Therianthropy vs." sections in the article, yet you don't actually cover the confusing one. 86.136.82.105 23:30, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that it should be merged with the article on therianthropy because otherkin refers to somebody who besides maybe feeling they are an animal soul, it also includes someone who has an affinity to a soul that is neither human or animal such as elf, or angel. Hello! -- Lighthead 23:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
In contrast to Lighthead's opinion, I do bleive that the two should be merged. However, due to distinct differences between the two subjects it would be wise to add Otherkin in the format of Lycanthropy. (i.e. another bullet in the Examples section) Terane 18:15, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I (who consider myself to be otherkin) am of the opinion that the article on otherkin should not be merged with therianthropy, not least because therianthropy does not only refer to those people who feel they are an animal soul - but also those people in myths who can turn into animals. Furthermore, if anything (not that I advocate this - I maintain the articles should be separet) I would say that therianthropy should be subsumed into otherkin, as Otherkin as I understanding it (the having of a non-human (albeity usually applied to mythical) soul) is a wider ranging predicate than therianthrope. - 1:37, 4 March 2007 (GMT)
I agree that Otherkin and Therians are distinct. Put into simple terms (useful only as a discussion point, not as a definition, Otherkin have (or claim) a connection to some mystical or otherworldly heritage, such as fey (fairy), angelic, or similar non-human non-terrestrial origins. Therians, in contrast, claim or have a connection to non-human but terrestrial creatures, namely animals of various types. Yes, there are parallels. Just as baseball and golf are similar in that they both involve hitting a ball with a stick. But their differences far outweigh the similarities. For this reason, the two articles should be kept separate, even if one does reference the other for comparison and contrast [Coragryph: 9 June 2007]
I've protected this article from editing by nameless IP's and new users. Over the last couple of days it's been targeted by one or more persons editing from various related IPs. FreplySpang (talk) 15:23, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Seriously, why do you all check this article so much? I know that the werelist site has a section on wikipedia.
Yeah, this will probably get reverted, but I'm just interested. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.204.67 ( talk • contribs)
Mostly, if you edit an article, it remains on your watch-list. It could be for a minor grammatical error, a wikilink addition, or a deletion of badly worded text, but by default it will be watched in future, on the basis editors who showed an interest may well continue to have an interest. Thats why. FT2 ( Talk) 18:20, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Why are you removing this? The idea that therianthropy and its derivatives in various forms exist in popular culture should be noted. It is most certainly NOT "totally worthless fictioncruft" or some such. -- Jesse Mulkey 17:23, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Since it appears that DreamGuy doesn't want a popular culture reference section, I have created a new page based on his advice here: Therianthropy in popular culture. -- Jesse Mulkey 21:56, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about that, Dreamguy. I didn't realize I hadn't read to the last version before trying to revert the vandalism Curps had missed. I must have been too pissed off by TFV to wait. Coyoty 20:09, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm seeing quite a lot of tension in this talk page between two viewpoints - the therian viewpoint and the mythology viewpoint. Except that they aren't really two viewpoints so much as they are two subjects. I thought. Time for disambiguation? I checked out other subcultures and their related mythologies. The vampire subculture and the vampire folklore page are two separate articles. The otherkin subculture is a separate article from the articles on the folklore of creatures such as elves, dragons and so on. The furry subculture is a separate article from the many types of funny animal, mythical and fictional, that inspire the furry subculture. For that matter, the biker subculture is a different article than motorcycles themselves. Nothing else has subculture material and other material mashed together into one article. But then I look at the therianthropy article and see why. It has very little other than the subculture material. There's not enough mythology to make more than a stub if it were split off. So I decided to be bold and do an expansion that would then justify the disambiguation that's aching to happen. The new therianthropy mythology article can be seen at Therianthropy (mythology), the new subculture article is at Therianthropy (subculture) (the original contents of the Therianthropy article were divided between those two as I thought they should go, feel free to reshuffle, I did not delete anyone's stuff, it is all in there somewhere) and the Therianthropy in popular culture article has been renamed Therianthropy (fiction) in preparation for what I am now doing, creating a Therianthropy disambiguation page. If for some reason I was way too bold in doing the disambiguation and I offended everyone, please don't just revert, since a lot of added material is in the new articles, including citations that had been missing before. Blue *Milk Mathematician 23:55, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
And User talk:Curps apparently auto-reverted it in less than a minute. I hope that was a program keyed simply to revert anything major, and not just someone who did not even look at my stuff for one minute, who reversed two days of painstaking, highly cited article writing that took me about 20 hours, and I DID NOT DELETE ANYTHING THAT WAS ALREADY THERE, only added material and disambiguated. Blue Milk Mathematician 00:38, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Blue Millky guy, you should be aware that the risk in being bold is that you will be overruled and that your work will be reverted. That's the problem when you do things without discussing them first. We can see from my response and the edit history here that your actions are opposed by the regular editors here, especially as the way you did it violated a number of policies, so I have redirected all the ridiculous fork files you created to this article, as it should be. If in fact there were new things added to those separate articles, instead of whining about it, move them here to the real article and see if they pass muster with the rest of the editors, or at least take the time to try to explain what you are doing. So, yeah, being bold is fine, but when what you do is undone by other people, you have no right to complain and try to act like people were unfairly screwing up your work. DreamGuy 19:47, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
I will follow your advice and put all my work on therianthropy in mythology back into the main article to see how it is received by the group. However, I wanted to refute your accusations:
I'm going to have to agree with Dreamguy. I didn't see any concensus before the changes were made, and wasn't sure if I had missed something. The method and style of the changes did disturb me, but I didn't have the opportunity or desire to take care of it at the time, and decided it was someone else's problem. (Sorry, DG.) I'm watching too many topics already and this wasn't a priority. I didn't respond to you or complain because I didn't feel like it, and it didn't mean I approved of your changes. The subject doesn't need so many different articles. Coyoty 19:22, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
My mythology additions were removed from therianthropy because they supposedly belong in lycanthropy, according to DreamGuy. I guess therianthropy is being shaped as an article that is entirely resistant to mythology about therianthropy, so I moved my therianthropy mythology section there. All of my sources are cited. I'm writing about this here because I don't want to be accused of being "sneaky" again. Yes, I'm totally honest about what I'm doing. Blue Milk Mathematician 01:51, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Currently, therianthropy breaks Wikipedia rules about no original research and verifiability and using websites as reliable sources. Therianthropy resists all mythology-based material, so it is almost entirely about a subculture with statements supported by websites. The only reference material cited is an 1886 work and a 1933 work, which could not apply to a subculture that started in the 1990s.
Published sources that could be used for citations do exist, three books:
I had added in parenthetical citations using the MLA style manual to the subcultural portions of the therianthropy article, but they got reverted in all the confusion I inadvertently caused. If anyone wants to, they can add in my old citations that got reverted. Otherwise, I'll probably manually add the citations back in myself after a week or so, if nobody objects. This means you need to actually disagree with me on a talk page this time, instead of hoping I'm telepathic and will pick up your silent disapproval and then getting pissed afterwards. Blue Milk Mathematician 23:18, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've added this stuff back in now. I might add a bit more later on, I think I lost the file of some of the material I was meaning to add. Blue Milk Mathematician 19:21, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Each time anyone adds external links of any sort, the whole section gets deleted, often because of nearby vandalism. However, considering how extremely Internet-based the subculture is, some sort of external links section seems almost required. Three or four good links would do it, we don't need a gigantic list. Here are my suggestions, roughly in order of quality:
I'm totally open to other suggestions, I think we should have something! Suggest all the external links you want, vote thumbs up or down on any that stand out, and then in a couple of weeks, let's actually add the 3 or 4 best ones (unless we get lots of "no external links at all" votes). Blue Milk Mathematician 14:27, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
OK, looks like nobody objects, so I'm putting them in now. If the entire links section gets deleted again I'm going to just put it back in unless someone gives a reason this time. Blue Milk Mathematician 03:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
A few beleive we should since this is a redirect from Therianism. Otherwise, what's the point of redirecting it, if it's not mentioned here. Suttle contrasts between the two, but they still are relivant majorly to some. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mix Bouda-Lycaon ( talk • contribs)
I cleaned up and NPOV'd a bunch of this article. Right now it's pretty bad, by the way. I guess I'll read up a bit more on the subject and try to help out. Vore tus the Benevolent 16:05, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
My first thought on coming across this page was to AfD it. The article is a neologism covered by 90% original research, has very few and poorly cited reliable sources, and very clearly owns it very existence to a POV causing it to fail wikpedia's policy of neutrality without even having to really get into the body of the article (which also fails POV). I would contest most of the basic assumptions the article puts forth by an obviosly biased source. Even the title is POV; Therianthrophy is made up word. It was created by an internet community to help give their group a more "scientific", "official" or "legit" sounding label. Otherkin, lycnathrope, were-(what ever creature), shapeshifter and the such was just getting them laughed at. The section on "Scholarly use of the term" can only be there to try and help justify or help legitimize the "modern usage" section. Why? Because as I've already said Therianthrophy is largely a made up word and has zero "scholarly" use at all. This artilce is a joke.
Still, some people have obviolsy put alot of work into this article and the presentation and formating of the article are actually pretty darn good. The tone of the article reads like an essay but it also strives to try and be scientific and neautral with results that are hit and miss. There is obvious a suprisingly large, even disporportional, number of editors on wikipedia that deal in some way shape or form the entire Otherkin, were, "Therian", New Age, neopaganism, etc realm and I find it hard to believe that some higher standard hasn't been adopted here. The title of this article needs to be scrapped but, in light of the amount of work that has gone into this article, does the possiblity exist that some other eidtors would be interested in a merge/redirect of qulaity and sourcable info to Shapeshifting or lycanthropy or some other more appropriate article? NeoFreak 07:59, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I actually created a Wikipedia account just to make this post. A friend of mine recently mentioned the word therianthropy. I was curious about it so I looked it up in Wikipedia and this was the page I found. If this page hadn't existed, I would have possibly had to hunt around for ages to find a credible source regarding what the term actually meant. Pedantry aside, this seems like a reasonable page to me, but I'm just a layman who isn't obsessed with updating or commenting on Wikipedia pages. Keenman76 16:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)Keenman76
As I noted in my comments against the proposal to delete this page, a quick search of google books shows the word 'therianthropy' used (for the same meaning as used in this article) in 1915. The word has been used more significantly in the last 10 years, but some of my research hints that it may have been in use (in criminal trials) as early as 1570.
The lack of citations in this article is definitely a problem, and it does need to be cleaned up and turned into something more encyclopedic. However, it's a spiritual phenomenon that has been documented by rigorous researchers as existing in stone age tribes. NickArgall 02:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
All the sources of a rigorous standard about Otherkin are in the context of 'belief in being an animal', ie, therianthropy. Otherkin belief can (and should, IMO) be regarded as a variation on therianthropic belief and be treated in 1 or 2 paragraphs in this article, as opposed to a separate article. NickArgall 02:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd say they should be merged into a single page. As I understand, therianthropy is with animals that exist and Otherkin is for animals that don't really exist, so they are quite similar besides that. -- CF90 22:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
'Therianthropy' has a mere 36,000 hits on Google (25,000 for 'therianthropy without otherkin' in advanced search), Otherkin (which includes the therian subculture) has 209,000 (goes down to 202,000 without therianthropy). If anything, the merge should go the other way, as 'otherkin' is obviously the dominant term that people will be looking for. Otherkin have been getting mentioned as such on television and in print media, both in fiction like cop shows and in serious non-fiction articles. It is the dominant term, and therianthropy is not. Thespian 00:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
I would not like to see the merge. Otherkin is an distinguishing term from Therianthrope, and it could be argued that Therians are a sub-division of Otherkin, just as it might be argued that Otherkin are a sub-division of Therianthropes. I suggest that the Otherkin stub remain as it is.
I don't want to sound harsh or dismissive but I think we should first fix the article as it is. Once we figure out what and how many diffrent articles and subgroups we can get reliable sources for then we can talk more realistically about splits.
NeoFreak 01:08, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't there be some listings about known people who actually claim to be Therian, such as groups or organizations, clubs, Therian philosopheers, writers, etc... something?
Otherkin and therianthropy, despite their similarities, are considered different by the groups themselves. Both are very subjective belief systems, which is why it can be difficult to provide citations, especially for otherkin, which is a more recent split off.
Otherkin is a highly controversial variation that's often rejected, even by the more open groups, such as wiccan. As an otherkin myself, I'm potently aware of such criticisms, despite having no "official" source to cite it from. Therianthropy is a much more accepted variation, as it pertains only to Earth creatures, and has roots in a considerable number of different metaphysical and religious points. If memory serves, hinduism is a faith in which animal reincarnation is accepted. In such, therianthropes are a bit more accepted.
Considering otherkin tends to involve more difficult to believe ideas, it's more commonly rejected, even by the more tolerant circles. So, though otherkin are (usually) more tolerant and open minded, accepting others of a larger variety of groups (so long as they, in turn, are accepted, of course), otherkin are generally considered a distinct group, being only universally accepted by other otherkin.
In such, despite the similarities between the two, they really should be seperate articles. I've noticed the otherkin article changing size and shape a great many times thus far, but hopefully, it will settle into a solid explaination of otherkin. It's the view of the outsider, who's not actually involved in the spiritual subtleties, that suggests merging the two points. Yes, from a distant view, they seem barely distinguishable, but once you're in it, you realize the difference. However, there should be links from one to the other, as point of comparison.
RubyCona 15:03, 28 December 2006 (UTC) RubyCona, Dragon Otherkin RubyCona 15:03, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
I see no evidence that therianthropy is the usual term for this phenomenon, either in folklore or elsewhere. I think the article intends to say that those who consider themselves shape-shifters self-identify as such. It is asserted that they actualy believe this, but I do not see how this could be proven.
The key reason to separate the folklore elements is that they are verifiable and notable by the ordinary standards, and the the presentation of this material should not be distorted by the discussion of the present-day self-identifiers. There is an immense amount of such folklore material, and it would make a good article, and I do suggest having it separate. What the correct name should be is unclear, but I doubt it should be therianthropy; one advantage of not using that name would be avoiding the negative connotations of unverifiable cult associations. I think those who want to keep the parts together are at least partially motivated by a fear of deletion of a separate article on the cult aspect for lack of verification. To someone from outside altogether, this is a good reason to separate the articles, so as not to delete the verifiable parts.
If here are two groups of self-identifiers with different concepts using different names, it would be in accord with WP practice to give them separate articles, as is done for religions and cults of all sorts, assuming they can prove a group identity. DGG 00:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Attention The URL discussed below will attempt to put a trojan (virus) on your computer. Fair warning. NeoFreak 13:38, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
See this edit comparison. Can we safely delete this? As far as I know, the Therian Temple is widely regarded as a hoax website created merely to promote an overly expensive self-published book, and has no standing at all in the therianthrope/otherkin subculture. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 19:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
-"As far as you know"* should not be the limitations of Wikipedia. "Church of Satan" Satanism is widely regarded by "Devil Worshippers" as a "hoax" because they do not recognize existence of a literal anthropomorphic "Satan" deity, yet it IS an existing school of thought. It is questionable how you choose to define "standing" in the 'community'? Is wikidpedia only an informational resource on what is "liked" now? Your personal opinion should not affect the content of an informational resource such as Wikipedia. ~twoCents
The article creator had two days to argue for keeping the material according to policy, and has not come up with anything. I saw another editor had deleted the link, so I went ahead and deleted the rest of the material (since its claim to validity rests mainly on a self-published book, it probably could never have satisfied WP:V anyway). Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 19:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
---Weren't almost ALL religious texts originally self-published?~hm?
I have added the 4th paragraph (as of the posting of this message) because I think that an article which deals with therianthropy and which people are talking about splitting into (subculture) and (mythology) really should make at least some mention of what the subculture is presently, in addition to making some cursory mention of what it is other than people who believe they are part animal, which could be taken in quite a few different ways. I really would that it not be removed without at least some discussion, naturally; I'm certain that some external references could be dredged back up from the carnage embodied in the previous versions. Falcon 06:56, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I think you need to reread the policy and guidline sections. Your basic assumptions such as reliable sources "changing situationally" tells me that you are not familiar with them. NeoFreak 08:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
That's really all that needs to be done. Just please point out that this article is about the mythology of therianthropy and not the subculture. I'm not even saying a subculture article has to be created. But people going on wikipedia to try learn about therianthropy as the subculture may see this and get very confused. Also the links should be made both to categories of the mythology and of the subculture. Because right now there are several links to much less harsh articles on therianthropy, but the stuff in the article seems like it could basically discredit anything that those positive articles say. If somebody goes in to look at those links after wikipedia's already told them it's a clinical disorder then it just seems like the ranting of the insane, or at least mildly disturbed. The article's received a ridiculous amount of editing for trying to make it NPOV, but now there's a fairly obvious POV that therians are either liars, or semi-crazy people. And since after 3 days nobody responded to this, I made a change myself I simply made it perfectly clear that the section about psychiatric therianthropy is an entirely different thing from the therianthropy of the subculture. Hopefully that'll at least get somebody's attention so the matter can be discussed. Anon 16:01, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Monsterous Manual called therianthropes as such; it may have been responsible for its popularization among those who called themselves such. Titanium Dragon 15:53, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Hm, I honestly don't mind that it was deleted. It's not like I put a ton of work into it. I'm just saying that the article should point out that it's about mythology and not the subculture. People that think they turn into animals are indeed crazy, but therians in the subculture do not believe they turn into animals. And in that case I was only making sure to point that out. Also if the article is going to be about psychiatric disorders and mythology then the links should go to those categories. All the links currently go to sites about the subculture when the article has nothing to do with it. And I just made another small edit, because that seems to be the only way to get in a conversation with the people "managing" this article. I was wondering though, how exactly does that book phrase it?. Anon 20:11, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
DreamGuy's deletion of the entire external links section was just reverted (see this edit). I had stopped trying to revert this article because of DreamGuy's continued attempts to argue me down by sheer force on places such as Werewolf fiction, but now that there's another supportive editor, I plan to support the existence of an external links section on this article. Now there are two editors here who think that an external links section is needed, and that DreamGuy's wholesale deletion is not according to policy. I'm just making this note here to keep track of the situation and allow others to comment if they have opinions too. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 18:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Hello, WP:EL is EXTREMELY clear on this point. "Links to be avoided" has "Links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors." Wikifur DOES NOT count as as substantial history of stability and substantial number of editors. Furthermore, the number one thing listed there under to be avoided links is "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article." which certainly applies in this case as well. Anyone claiming "uh. but that page is ust a guideline" misses that MOST things on Wikipedia are "just" guidelines, like evolution is "just" a theory. There's no good reason to link to some minor wiki project, as it wholly fails reliability under other tests. Anyone here wants to disagree, go get the necessary consensus to change [[WP:EL]. Until that gets changed, Wikipedia has established a wide consensus that such links are wholly inappopriate, so it simply cannot be here. DreamGuy 03:34, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
I have posted this as a request to The Mediation Cabal, before this heats up into a full edit war instead of just a pesky case of revertitis on both sides. My request can be read here. -- Thespian 04:43, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Seems the case has since been "closed" again. So, where does that leave us? The dispute's still the same and DreamGuy has never been the sort to back down or compromise from what I've seen in the past. Bryan Derksen 02:22, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Boy, you people don't get how things work here. Mediation is not proper for these kind of disputes, not because "I think I am right" but because mediator is just one person who cannot overrule policy. WP:3O was never an option because there were more than two editors involved. And calling for arbitration? Absolutely ridiculous. You claim I don't know what I am talking about the policies here and then demonstrate you aren't familiar with the policies or guidelines for anything you are talking about here. You guys dispute what WP:EL says, the correct route is to get people from that page to come here and take a look at it, not to flail around making moves that aren't following procedure and then get pissed off when I don't agree to them.
It's true that I end up frequently getting in disputes, but that happens when people not following policy insist on ignoring it and not looking into the proper way to do things. Not to mention I also have some wikistalkers following me around trying to cause grief (like Mermaid of the baltic sea above) because they are still upset about conflicts they lost on other pages. But I also have a great track record for being the side that ends up prevailing in the end, because I know the policies, participate in the talk pages for them, and follow them. The conflict on this page is an absolute no brainer, based upon what WP:EL says and other similar disputes that have been handled recently on this topic. DreamGuy 00:23, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
I have restored the furry.wikia.com link in the External links section after substantial perusal of WP:EL and current practice on the project in general. Hopefully, this explanation will satisfy the concerned parties.
Our guideline on external links does caution against "Links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors." Obviously, some links to other wikis, especially those at Wikia, are tolerated. In fact, there are over 8000 links to *.wikia.com currently in the English Wikipedia. Many are from Talk or User pages to be sure, but a substantial number are included as external links from articles. WikiFur is among those wikis linked, with over 100 such links, several of which have long acceptance at established articles. In fact, WikiFur has an entry in the interwiki map, to which no objections have been raised. There is even an attribution template to be used for GFDL-compliant material with origins at WikiFur (in use for at least one article). It is correct to say that WikiFur is not a reliable source for references (by definition, as it is a wiki) but WP:EL also says links may be considered to "Sites which fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources." It is a specialized sister project, not a competitor, and not one that is prohibited by either the letter or spirit of existing policy and practice. Serpent's Choice 21:24, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
And here we go. [9], [10], [11], [12] - it's ongoing as I write this. DreamGuy, please, you're only going to spread flames everywhere. Bryan Derksen 00:41, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
I've requested intervention over at WP:AN/I#Rapid-fire external link removal by DreamGuy. Bryan Derksen 00:51, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Now that the debate of WikiFur and this article directly has been resolved (for the short term) I would suggest carrying any further discussion of the application of WP:EL to WikiFur over to that discussion page, Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Wikifur. This way it can be resolved in a centralized and finale manner. NeoFreak 01:11, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
For the moment, my reply is in this diff but I hope to add more soon. Please be patient and thank you. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 16:17, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
The WikiFur link from this page plainly violated WP:EL and was frankly embarrassing. The guideline is clear that such links should never be used not just because the blatant conflict of interest, not just because the Wiki in question does not meet the Wiki criteria of WP:EL but because the link was totally lame, without any semblance of being a reliable source that added value over and above this article. 2005 03:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
It may be of interest to mention uses earlier than the 1901 therianthropy ref cited. The historian and philosopher of religion Cornelis Petrus Tiele of Leiden is credited ( here in 1895) with having dubbed certain religions therianthropic, so I looked it up and found it in 1892 here and in 1897 here with etymology. Based on how he used it apparently without definition in 1892, it must have been known at the time. In 1899 here he defines it, so maybe it wasn't as known as he had hoped. Perhaps the mention of religious historian Mircea Eliade should be supplemented with Tiele. Dicklyon 06:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
Who has the Cohen Werewolves book? What does it actually say? I have a hard time believing it talks about usenet, so at least part of that paragraph likely needs to be cleaned up. Dicklyon 06:58, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
What on earth is the picture of Horus doing on this page? Egyptian gods have no place here -- the Egyptians didn't actually /believe/ their gods had animal heads, they were only portrayed that way to assist the illiterate in differentiating between them (the gods). Archtemplar 23:10, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Here are some orphaned sources that were listed at the bottom of lycanthopy, much of the general shape-shifting info having been trasferred hither: Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 22:10, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
It is very offensive to actual Therians to have this article use the term "Internet subculture" to describe an entire group of people's real life beliefs and identities.
Therianthropy is a form of self-identification in regards to personal beliefs, not a "subculture", as if it were a fashion or genre like punk or goth. It is ESPECIALLY not only an "internet" phenomenon.
To say that Therianthropy/Therianism is an "Internet subculture" just because some of the people happen to communicate online is akin to saying that Christianity is a "literary subculture" because it happened to be written down in a book. Also the term Therianthrope was used in this sense as early as 1915, long before the internet.
Secondly, There is no reference anywhere in the article to any actual Therian-related Organizations such as Therian Temple or books about Therian-related occultism such as the Therian Bible ( ISBN 978-0-557-01649-5). Even if it (as noted above) the group is small (although we have no way of knowing that for sure one way or the other), it being the first Therianthropic "religious" group is certainly word noting if Therianthropy itself is considered notable enough for an article.
Also the person above saying their (TT) site has malicious code is obviously lying-I just went to the Therian Temple site and there is nothing even abnormal about the code, not even any ads or pop-ups. We cannot just leave notable people or groups out of Wikipedia just because certain editors may not agree with their beliefs--I mean we have plenty of articles on various Nazis, but (hopefully) not everyone agrees with them.-- Chicagomusicfan ( talk) 10:54, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Therianthropy as mentioned in the above article is a " Therianthropy as a subculture does not have any central dogma or tenets, nor any recognized authority", and yet here we are being bombarded with definitions that are uncited. Yes, I see the classical definition listed, but nowhere is anyone trying to show the reality of therianthropy -- and are quite frankly, mocking it.
The validity of portions of the third paragraph under 'Subculture social structure' is uncited, and frankly unfounded in the therian community. Therianthropy is in noway connected with the 'Bears', and is not wrought by video games (Please cite a scientific study, while I will agree it could be, I ask for your proof). There is no interconnection to anything referred to in this third paragraph, but possibly the " Werewolf: The Apocalypse" (remotely if that).
Terrorwolf 22:47, 26 November 2005 (UTC) TerrorWolf Pennsylvania State University
I will agree that I see no real connection between Therianthropy and role gaming except that some Therians might incidentally role game. Of all the Therians I know, only one might be described as a "Gamer" and the incidental gaming that the others have done does not seem to focus on Werewolves. Therians are just about the most "reality based" people I have ever run into.
As for Bears, I have noticed a lot of crossover between the Furry community and the Bear community but I don't know a single Therian associated in any way with the Bear community (which is rather strange since I do know several Gay Therians).
I don't see much connection between the Therian community and Otherkin except, perhaps the Draconics, and there does seem to be a subset of the Dragon community that seems to gravitate toward the Therian community.
Actually, though, Terrorwolf, it's going to be hard to produce much in the way of scholarly material related to therianthropy. The modern community didn't exist earlier than 1993 and Therians are a hardy bunch that simply hasn't presented much in the clinical arena and when they have, it has usually been for tangetial problems - not anything obviously related to Therianthropy.
There is weak research being carried on now but the methods available to individual Therians and other people currently interested have obvious shortcomings (small and nonrepresentative samples, etc.) and can only be used as pilot research. Nothing has had the time to appear in peer reviewed literature. Wolf VanZandt 11/28/05.
I would like to point out that as of 08/04/13 there have been quite a few thesis' - peer reviewed literature and lectures on therianthropy published by universities, and to see my suggestions below as to using the new published research for creating a seperate therianthropy community/subculture page. Emily 08/04/2013
Thanks, Emily. I try to keep up with the substantive research being done on therianthropy. I'm waiting for three reports to come out now, so there is a lot of interest in the academic world. I generally report my reviews on The Therian Timeline and have just finished (for the time being) a section on Therian psychology. I'll be working on sociology next - since I live in an intentional community with 6 other Weres and in a larger community of about 50, I'm getting plenty of anecdotal material. I don't get by here too often, though. The quality of therianthropological research has improved considerably since the last time I posted. I've made the statement several times in support of therianthropological researchers that they are working with some special situations that hamper their progress, such as difficulty in obtaining representative samples, but you have to start somewhere and I'm very appreciative of what has been done and I see some of the early errors being corrected, which is pretty much how sociological research proceeds. WolfVanZandt ( talk) 19:29, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
First of all, my edit may have been POV due to wording, but the fact is still true: therianthropy hasn't been studied, and therefore cannot be dismissed or confirmed. Second of all, why on earth is there more information here than on the article? -- ConservapediaUndergroundResistor ( talk) 21:11, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Why the relationship between trance (altered state of consciousness) and the therianthropic vision mostly painted in rock art and depict by many shamans has not been discussed in this article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.2.119.211 ( talk) 12:14, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
Per my edit summary, I removed this section of the lede (as well as made some minor syntax changes):
Common day therianthropy (According to research) is a belief someone's spirit is crossed with another. Therians (Short for people who are therianthropes) do NOT go through physical shifts as what above states, they may go through metal shifts though. I do not know how the explanation above would relate to common day therianthropy.
I'm not trying to outright remove this idea from the wiki, but don't think that the tone or parentheticals are appropriate for the wiki. If anyone wants to put it back in, I suggest rewriting it to be more in line with the rest of the article (no first person POV, etc). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Havensfire ( talk • contribs) 23:58, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
I know this has been suggested previously, but I'd like to bring it up again, and with some fresh ideas and sources. I'd like to suggest that the therianthropy (self identification) part of the current therianthropy article should link to a main article on the topic, constructed using the following sources (although yes, I'll reference them properly if we do make the actual article):
These are all either documentaries, books, news articles, thesis' published by universities or lectures given in universities. Would these sources be considered all suitable and valid to be used? I can provide links to any of them if wished. Does anybody object to the change, now that it can be argued that therianthropy is a studied phenomena - considering the anthropological and theological papers? Would this move be immediately reversed if proceeded with, and under what grounds? Any objections to me just steamrolling ahead and getting something basic hashed out? Thanks! Emily 08/04/2013
Current list of references (last chance to complain guys! (who am I kidding, I'm sure it'll have to be redone afterwards))
If you read Gary Melhorn's The Esoteric Codex: Shapeshifters, you'll see that the first paragraph in 131.1: Human Shapshifting sounds awfully familiar. Too familiar. As in, it's plagiarism. Word for word right in there, and it's not even in the references. Just wanted to bring that to your attention. 72.45.37.29 ( talk) 01:29, 16 March 2016 (UTC)Cecilia 3/15/16
I'm a bit surprised no reference is made to the silkie myths of the Western Isles. Everybody got to be somewhere! ( talk) 01:23, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
I have to agree with previous commentary that this should really be two pages. One about therianthropy as a concept in mythology and one about the modern subculture. While I appreciate that these are related topics, having read some of the material available on both sides, it seems quite clear that they are heavily distinct, with the subculture being based only tenuously on the mythological concept. There are completely sufficient sources to produce two separate pages much like the pages for Vampire Lifestyle and Vampire are separate. If nothing else, this would hopefully stem the constant flow of vandalism that this page experiences. I appreciate that it would be a big job to make such a drastic change but, from the activity on this page, one feels confident that there are plenty of keen contributors who would be up for the challenge. Tommarquand 10:14, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
The children of Lir are incorrectly described in the illustration. They did not have the power to turn into swans. They were turned into swans by a spell cast over them by their wicked stepmother.
Rconroy ( talk) 10:21, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
I'm here of one who believes something about this page should drastically change. Specificly about the notion of Modern Therianthropy.
I understand that Therianthropy and Modern Therianthropy (aka the subculture/experience/identification from more recently) are two different things. The issue however is that the majority of the Modern Therian community just uses 'therianthropy', ends up at this page and gets confused. Not only because currently 'Therian' is categorized under 'Psychiatric Aspects', which gives the impression it's something psychiatric that needs psychiatric help and therefore does not only harm to the Modern Therian community but also to parents being unfairly putten into mental healthcare by their parents who visit this wikipedia page.
I believe that therefore, Modern Therianthropy eitherway has to be mentioned in this wikipedia page. Further info on it either being given underneath it in it's own section (to clearly seperate it from regular Therianthropy) or in another wikipedia page (about that, a little further more info why that's a problem)through a link.
I personally am going to seperate therian from clinical lycanthropy under a different heading, simply to undo the damage of people unfairly lumping it in with the psychiatric condition. Because at this point there has been no clear indicators or proof that Modern Therianthropy is psychiatric or a mental condition.
But, Modern Therianthropy by now (2 july 2020) has a known history of 27 years old. The first online mentions afterall having be publicied on Alt.Horror.Werewolves (usenet group) in 1993. Modern Therianthropy clearly exists as a concept and experience and more so as an online phenomen (community, subculture, ..). It deserves being recognized and given information about. Even if just for the many people who stream here onto 'Therianthropy' and do not find what they are looking for or leave confused and misinformed (thinking it's a psychiatric condition)
I wrote a detailed edit, sourcing to original archived pages of therianthropy being first discussed on the internet. Including discussion, date, place and person. The Therian Community expressed to, for once, be satisfied with the correct representation and historical clarity. This sadly was undone because of the sources not being reliable. Appearently these have to be something along the lines of someone else talking about those first discussions rather than litterally the archived first discussions.
The Modern Therian community is too small (yet heavily growing), but most of all not given attention from outsiders other than regular and curious people. No scientists writing paper about them, no trustworthy sites writing about them,.. Not without trolling, saying completely inaccurate things, negative subjective opinions etc. By this, there simply are non of such sites or books written by others about Modern Therianthropy. By this, it would be impossible to ever have a page about modern therianthropy. Because all that exists of it, is writings on forums, talk about experiences (as it is an experience/belief/identity/..)by individuals on forums, archives of the first ever mentions of it or its terminology etc. But, non of these can be used as a source as it's multimedia.
In short, one cannot ever write about an online community. Because of being forbidden to use online social material (such as forum posts), even if it only exists there: on forum posts. As long as it isn't so wellknown, that it is written about by reliable outsiders. Other than to troll or ridicule or without being too vague.
There are a few websites out there that are collectives of information (such as linking & talking about the archived discussions of modern therianthropy in 1993), but all are owned by therians and may still be found to be too subjective. example: http://www.theriantimeline.com/ , http://projectshift.therianthropy.info/, https://therian.fandom.com (why: A; are independant, B. have editorial oversight and C. fact-check for accuracy and are no usergenerated content but rather talk about the user generated content, include archived material etc)
But, I don't believe these could ever be enough to 'source' everything. Exactly because modern therianthropy can only be found (loose from the in-real-life happenings ofcourse which aren't exaclty able to be sourced) on forums, through usergenerated content etc.
So, even if I did put time into creating its own page for Modern Therianthropy, lose from Therianthropy (but linked within it to help prevent the confusion) I'd never have enough sources to link I believe.
Anyone has any thoughts on how to fix this issue? Or advice? PD PinkDolphin ( talk) 21:00, 2 July 2020 (UTC)PD PinkDolphin
The "bear shirts" of Scandanavia (I think). Not a word about them! Don't see too much here from Africa either. Vendrov ( talk) 06:43, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
Voice of scientists 103.118.50.71 ( talk) 00:47, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
This section seems to rely on a single source of potentially dubious quality. Kelryn ( talk) 13:08, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
There are hardly any references for this section. I've never edited on wikipedia, so it'd be great if someone could find + add references or else alter the text to only include referenced content :) 2407:7000:A2DA:5000:4DC6:EAA4:4FB4:6D9C ( talk) 11:53, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
This archive page covers approximately the dates between Aug 23, 2004, and Jul 31, 2005.
Is there any one here veiwing this page who has seen the goofy stuff on the internet that their saying about therianthropes i saw this one that said that there is no difference between lycanthropes and therianthropes i was so pissed, and they we the kind of poeple who thought lycanthropes were actual werewolves! i was so pissed they didn't even have a chat room to bitch them out on!!!
-very angry-
Alot of people miss interpret what a therianthrope is they don't even know what a lycanthrope is most of the time so i am here to end the confussion.
therianthrope, a personal belief were he or she believes they have the spirit of an animal inside them, they (being a therianthrope myself) undergo a mental shift Italic textNOT PHYSICAL!!!!Italic text and durring that shift they have sharp hearing accute scences and clearer vission, but i feel its unfair to us as therianthropes to not be able to do what our hearts desire for me thats run and play in the falling snow, feel my paws in the rain soaked dirt, and i can't do that because of societies expectaions of NORMAL.
honestly, who could mistake these two subjects as being the same? lycanthropy is a medical state, not a sipritual, or like the smaller number of people who believe in therianthropy,psycological state, like so many of them believe. just do a search for Therianthropy on any search engone, they will all clarify this subject much better then i can.
-Cory
your thinking of lyncanthropy as ther medical state. a common error.
Gabrielsimon 21:41, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
sorry, its Cory again, just wanting to say, that being a Therianthrope, I think that the vast majority of these people out there DO NOT believe that this is only a mental shift, as is clearly stated. for gods sake people, if you want that, check the section on LYCANTHROPY, thats a completely different thing, so check that out if you need further clarification.
I have problem with the objectivity of this comment:
"However, there is a strong, though ill-defined, notion that a therianthrope is one who feels they are the animal inside, rather than having an external connection such as a totem or spirit guide, and those who claim external connections are sometimes shunned as fakers."
It seems that the issue of totem animals is more popular in some communities than others. Everyone seems to have different ideas about the popularity of certain beliefs with therians and otherkin. Personally, I have never heard of anyone being looked down upon for believing they had a totem or a spirit guide. Nor do we have to conceptualize this whole thing in the typical internal/external binary; a spirit guide or totem, though it may be an independent entity, could still be a core part of a therian's identity. Putrescent stench 20:10, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Eequor, please stop reverting this article. I have added factual information about the historical use of the name, as Webster's dictionary defines it, as described in the werewolf article, and as used in folklore. Having the entire article be nothing but information on a modern subculture/religious faith who believes that they have wolf (or cat or dog or whatever) souls in them would be like blanking the entire vampire article and replacing it with information about modern day fringe groups who believe that they are undead. I think it's pretty over the top for you to blindly revert the article and then label it as "attempts to insert POV material" on the requests for comment page. All I am attempting to do is get neutral information about the actual meaning of the word into the article instead of just the views of a subculture that is trying to appropriate the word to their own ends. This has nothing to do with POV. DreamGuy 07:57, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
OK, recent restructuring just went and made the problem we corrected earlier worse... It's now sectioned out but the sections that used to be about the accurate, historical and folklore meaning of the word have been changed to the meaning invented by the modern subculture and the bits about the accurate meaning have been fractured, split up and strewn here and there so it makes no sense. DreamGuy 16:20, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)
2 articles isn't really needed, if it can be split into 2 articles it can be split into 2 sections in one article. But with respect, I think DreamGuy is wrong. a subculture is a part of a culture - a group of people, their social and modes of interaction, etc (see subculture). It is possible for a person to self identify as therian on the basis that they (for example) feel they have an animals soul, and not be part of or within the subculture. So you haven't got "scholarly" vs. "subculture", but "scholarly" vs. "modern uses" -- sub culture (ie the subculture adopted or entered into by those who self identify as therian) is a logically separate matter. I have tried to address this by leaving your organisation, but tweaking the titles of the section so that instead of being called "subculture" it is called "modern subculture uses", which is accurate, with "subculture" then a section within that which describes the subculture itself. FT2 12:29, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)
Subculture certainly works, as the subheading has it, but fringe I think is more specific and a way of varying the terms.
Subculture: "In sociology, a subculture is a culture or set of people with distinct behavior and beliefs within a larger culture. "
Fringe: "By extension, any cultural manifestation not in the mainstream can be said to be on the fringe."
Fringe is more precise, as it's not in the mainstream. Subculture is a term for any sort of group. Therians are very definitely fringe, simply as objective reality. DreamGuy 17:57, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
Don't really mind me, I am only here to say that the greek word "theros" means "summer" and that "therion" is the word you're looking for. I edited it.
Who is that went back through the page and changed "non-human animal" into "animal" in several places? It took a great deal of time to go through the article and add in "non-human" in order to correct repetitive implications that humans and "animals" are different entities. The word animal includes humans. Saying something like "some human traits, and some animal traits" is like saying that a dog has "some canine traits, and some mammalian traits". If something is a human trait, then that automatically makes it an animal trait as well.
I suspect this was an act of vandalism by some religious person who believes that humans aren't animals. Yet the word "animal" comes from the Latin anima, meaning "spirit, soul, or breath of life". It is defined by the very things that such religious types think humans possess which other animals do not. Thus, saying that a human is "not an animal" is essentially the same as talking about round squares and portable holes. It's completely non-sensical.
I'm reverting the page. -- Corvun 03:37, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
that would be user:DreamGuy Gabrielsimon 03:52, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
how could you say that with a straight face? Gabrielsimon 05:37, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
Looking this article over, it seems to have a number of instances of sentences where the NPoV principle is violated. In particular, that but about mental illness near the beginning is singularily blatant. Although this article is not entirely offensive, I feel that it is absurd to regard these people as though they were in fact insane (which they quite arguably are not). A significant reworking of this page is required in order to remove the bias that this line of thinking is in fact complete nonsense. Some citations would also be nice. Falcon 16:43, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
Should the page contain examples? I am thinking about for instance this tiger guy that has got fangs operated onto him. I think he's quite famous. 惑乱 分からん 21:30, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Doesn't "therion" more accurately mean "beast" than "wild animal"? -- Arny 03:33, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Can someone please, please, explain to me what the difference is between (spiritual) therianthropy and otherkin. I'm so confused. :-( 86.142.179.66 21:26, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Heh, you have reason to be confused. Generally, Otherkin relate to mythological beings; Therians relate to animals that do exit or have existed. The main observable difference is that Otherkin usually claim to be Otherkin whereas many Therians refuse the appelation. Nevertheless, various Ortherkin are more likely to socialize than Therians with Otherkin. In other words, the Otherkin community and the Therian community tend to be distinctly separated.
It's interesting that you have four "Therianthropy vs." sections in the article, yet you don't actually cover the confusing one. 86.136.82.105 23:30, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that it should be merged with the article on therianthropy because otherkin refers to somebody who besides maybe feeling they are an animal soul, it also includes someone who has an affinity to a soul that is neither human or animal such as elf, or angel. Hello! -- Lighthead 23:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
In contrast to Lighthead's opinion, I do bleive that the two should be merged. However, due to distinct differences between the two subjects it would be wise to add Otherkin in the format of Lycanthropy. (i.e. another bullet in the Examples section) Terane 18:15, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I (who consider myself to be otherkin) am of the opinion that the article on otherkin should not be merged with therianthropy, not least because therianthropy does not only refer to those people who feel they are an animal soul - but also those people in myths who can turn into animals. Furthermore, if anything (not that I advocate this - I maintain the articles should be separet) I would say that therianthropy should be subsumed into otherkin, as Otherkin as I understanding it (the having of a non-human (albeity usually applied to mythical) soul) is a wider ranging predicate than therianthrope. - 1:37, 4 March 2007 (GMT)
I agree that Otherkin and Therians are distinct. Put into simple terms (useful only as a discussion point, not as a definition, Otherkin have (or claim) a connection to some mystical or otherworldly heritage, such as fey (fairy), angelic, or similar non-human non-terrestrial origins. Therians, in contrast, claim or have a connection to non-human but terrestrial creatures, namely animals of various types. Yes, there are parallels. Just as baseball and golf are similar in that they both involve hitting a ball with a stick. But their differences far outweigh the similarities. For this reason, the two articles should be kept separate, even if one does reference the other for comparison and contrast [Coragryph: 9 June 2007]
I've protected this article from editing by nameless IP's and new users. Over the last couple of days it's been targeted by one or more persons editing from various related IPs. FreplySpang (talk) 15:23, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Seriously, why do you all check this article so much? I know that the werelist site has a section on wikipedia.
Yeah, this will probably get reverted, but I'm just interested. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.204.67 ( talk • contribs)
Mostly, if you edit an article, it remains on your watch-list. It could be for a minor grammatical error, a wikilink addition, or a deletion of badly worded text, but by default it will be watched in future, on the basis editors who showed an interest may well continue to have an interest. Thats why. FT2 ( Talk) 18:20, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Why are you removing this? The idea that therianthropy and its derivatives in various forms exist in popular culture should be noted. It is most certainly NOT "totally worthless fictioncruft" or some such. -- Jesse Mulkey 17:23, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Since it appears that DreamGuy doesn't want a popular culture reference section, I have created a new page based on his advice here: Therianthropy in popular culture. -- Jesse Mulkey 21:56, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about that, Dreamguy. I didn't realize I hadn't read to the last version before trying to revert the vandalism Curps had missed. I must have been too pissed off by TFV to wait. Coyoty 20:09, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm seeing quite a lot of tension in this talk page between two viewpoints - the therian viewpoint and the mythology viewpoint. Except that they aren't really two viewpoints so much as they are two subjects. I thought. Time for disambiguation? I checked out other subcultures and their related mythologies. The vampire subculture and the vampire folklore page are two separate articles. The otherkin subculture is a separate article from the articles on the folklore of creatures such as elves, dragons and so on. The furry subculture is a separate article from the many types of funny animal, mythical and fictional, that inspire the furry subculture. For that matter, the biker subculture is a different article than motorcycles themselves. Nothing else has subculture material and other material mashed together into one article. But then I look at the therianthropy article and see why. It has very little other than the subculture material. There's not enough mythology to make more than a stub if it were split off. So I decided to be bold and do an expansion that would then justify the disambiguation that's aching to happen. The new therianthropy mythology article can be seen at Therianthropy (mythology), the new subculture article is at Therianthropy (subculture) (the original contents of the Therianthropy article were divided between those two as I thought they should go, feel free to reshuffle, I did not delete anyone's stuff, it is all in there somewhere) and the Therianthropy in popular culture article has been renamed Therianthropy (fiction) in preparation for what I am now doing, creating a Therianthropy disambiguation page. If for some reason I was way too bold in doing the disambiguation and I offended everyone, please don't just revert, since a lot of added material is in the new articles, including citations that had been missing before. Blue *Milk Mathematician 23:55, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
And User talk:Curps apparently auto-reverted it in less than a minute. I hope that was a program keyed simply to revert anything major, and not just someone who did not even look at my stuff for one minute, who reversed two days of painstaking, highly cited article writing that took me about 20 hours, and I DID NOT DELETE ANYTHING THAT WAS ALREADY THERE, only added material and disambiguated. Blue Milk Mathematician 00:38, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Blue Millky guy, you should be aware that the risk in being bold is that you will be overruled and that your work will be reverted. That's the problem when you do things without discussing them first. We can see from my response and the edit history here that your actions are opposed by the regular editors here, especially as the way you did it violated a number of policies, so I have redirected all the ridiculous fork files you created to this article, as it should be. If in fact there were new things added to those separate articles, instead of whining about it, move them here to the real article and see if they pass muster with the rest of the editors, or at least take the time to try to explain what you are doing. So, yeah, being bold is fine, but when what you do is undone by other people, you have no right to complain and try to act like people were unfairly screwing up your work. DreamGuy 19:47, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
I will follow your advice and put all my work on therianthropy in mythology back into the main article to see how it is received by the group. However, I wanted to refute your accusations:
I'm going to have to agree with Dreamguy. I didn't see any concensus before the changes were made, and wasn't sure if I had missed something. The method and style of the changes did disturb me, but I didn't have the opportunity or desire to take care of it at the time, and decided it was someone else's problem. (Sorry, DG.) I'm watching too many topics already and this wasn't a priority. I didn't respond to you or complain because I didn't feel like it, and it didn't mean I approved of your changes. The subject doesn't need so many different articles. Coyoty 19:22, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
My mythology additions were removed from therianthropy because they supposedly belong in lycanthropy, according to DreamGuy. I guess therianthropy is being shaped as an article that is entirely resistant to mythology about therianthropy, so I moved my therianthropy mythology section there. All of my sources are cited. I'm writing about this here because I don't want to be accused of being "sneaky" again. Yes, I'm totally honest about what I'm doing. Blue Milk Mathematician 01:51, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Currently, therianthropy breaks Wikipedia rules about no original research and verifiability and using websites as reliable sources. Therianthropy resists all mythology-based material, so it is almost entirely about a subculture with statements supported by websites. The only reference material cited is an 1886 work and a 1933 work, which could not apply to a subculture that started in the 1990s.
Published sources that could be used for citations do exist, three books:
I had added in parenthetical citations using the MLA style manual to the subcultural portions of the therianthropy article, but they got reverted in all the confusion I inadvertently caused. If anyone wants to, they can add in my old citations that got reverted. Otherwise, I'll probably manually add the citations back in myself after a week or so, if nobody objects. This means you need to actually disagree with me on a talk page this time, instead of hoping I'm telepathic and will pick up your silent disapproval and then getting pissed afterwards. Blue Milk Mathematician 23:18, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've added this stuff back in now. I might add a bit more later on, I think I lost the file of some of the material I was meaning to add. Blue Milk Mathematician 19:21, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Each time anyone adds external links of any sort, the whole section gets deleted, often because of nearby vandalism. However, considering how extremely Internet-based the subculture is, some sort of external links section seems almost required. Three or four good links would do it, we don't need a gigantic list. Here are my suggestions, roughly in order of quality:
I'm totally open to other suggestions, I think we should have something! Suggest all the external links you want, vote thumbs up or down on any that stand out, and then in a couple of weeks, let's actually add the 3 or 4 best ones (unless we get lots of "no external links at all" votes). Blue Milk Mathematician 14:27, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
OK, looks like nobody objects, so I'm putting them in now. If the entire links section gets deleted again I'm going to just put it back in unless someone gives a reason this time. Blue Milk Mathematician 03:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
A few beleive we should since this is a redirect from Therianism. Otherwise, what's the point of redirecting it, if it's not mentioned here. Suttle contrasts between the two, but they still are relivant majorly to some. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mix Bouda-Lycaon ( talk • contribs)
I cleaned up and NPOV'd a bunch of this article. Right now it's pretty bad, by the way. I guess I'll read up a bit more on the subject and try to help out. Vore tus the Benevolent 16:05, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
My first thought on coming across this page was to AfD it. The article is a neologism covered by 90% original research, has very few and poorly cited reliable sources, and very clearly owns it very existence to a POV causing it to fail wikpedia's policy of neutrality without even having to really get into the body of the article (which also fails POV). I would contest most of the basic assumptions the article puts forth by an obviosly biased source. Even the title is POV; Therianthrophy is made up word. It was created by an internet community to help give their group a more "scientific", "official" or "legit" sounding label. Otherkin, lycnathrope, were-(what ever creature), shapeshifter and the such was just getting them laughed at. The section on "Scholarly use of the term" can only be there to try and help justify or help legitimize the "modern usage" section. Why? Because as I've already said Therianthrophy is largely a made up word and has zero "scholarly" use at all. This artilce is a joke.
Still, some people have obviolsy put alot of work into this article and the presentation and formating of the article are actually pretty darn good. The tone of the article reads like an essay but it also strives to try and be scientific and neautral with results that are hit and miss. There is obvious a suprisingly large, even disporportional, number of editors on wikipedia that deal in some way shape or form the entire Otherkin, were, "Therian", New Age, neopaganism, etc realm and I find it hard to believe that some higher standard hasn't been adopted here. The title of this article needs to be scrapped but, in light of the amount of work that has gone into this article, does the possiblity exist that some other eidtors would be interested in a merge/redirect of qulaity and sourcable info to Shapeshifting or lycanthropy or some other more appropriate article? NeoFreak 07:59, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I actually created a Wikipedia account just to make this post. A friend of mine recently mentioned the word therianthropy. I was curious about it so I looked it up in Wikipedia and this was the page I found. If this page hadn't existed, I would have possibly had to hunt around for ages to find a credible source regarding what the term actually meant. Pedantry aside, this seems like a reasonable page to me, but I'm just a layman who isn't obsessed with updating or commenting on Wikipedia pages. Keenman76 16:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)Keenman76
As I noted in my comments against the proposal to delete this page, a quick search of google books shows the word 'therianthropy' used (for the same meaning as used in this article) in 1915. The word has been used more significantly in the last 10 years, but some of my research hints that it may have been in use (in criminal trials) as early as 1570.
The lack of citations in this article is definitely a problem, and it does need to be cleaned up and turned into something more encyclopedic. However, it's a spiritual phenomenon that has been documented by rigorous researchers as existing in stone age tribes. NickArgall 02:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
All the sources of a rigorous standard about Otherkin are in the context of 'belief in being an animal', ie, therianthropy. Otherkin belief can (and should, IMO) be regarded as a variation on therianthropic belief and be treated in 1 or 2 paragraphs in this article, as opposed to a separate article. NickArgall 02:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd say they should be merged into a single page. As I understand, therianthropy is with animals that exist and Otherkin is for animals that don't really exist, so they are quite similar besides that. -- CF90 22:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
'Therianthropy' has a mere 36,000 hits on Google (25,000 for 'therianthropy without otherkin' in advanced search), Otherkin (which includes the therian subculture) has 209,000 (goes down to 202,000 without therianthropy). If anything, the merge should go the other way, as 'otherkin' is obviously the dominant term that people will be looking for. Otherkin have been getting mentioned as such on television and in print media, both in fiction like cop shows and in serious non-fiction articles. It is the dominant term, and therianthropy is not. Thespian 00:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
I would not like to see the merge. Otherkin is an distinguishing term from Therianthrope, and it could be argued that Therians are a sub-division of Otherkin, just as it might be argued that Otherkin are a sub-division of Therianthropes. I suggest that the Otherkin stub remain as it is.
I don't want to sound harsh or dismissive but I think we should first fix the article as it is. Once we figure out what and how many diffrent articles and subgroups we can get reliable sources for then we can talk more realistically about splits.
NeoFreak 01:08, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't there be some listings about known people who actually claim to be Therian, such as groups or organizations, clubs, Therian philosopheers, writers, etc... something?
Otherkin and therianthropy, despite their similarities, are considered different by the groups themselves. Both are very subjective belief systems, which is why it can be difficult to provide citations, especially for otherkin, which is a more recent split off.
Otherkin is a highly controversial variation that's often rejected, even by the more open groups, such as wiccan. As an otherkin myself, I'm potently aware of such criticisms, despite having no "official" source to cite it from. Therianthropy is a much more accepted variation, as it pertains only to Earth creatures, and has roots in a considerable number of different metaphysical and religious points. If memory serves, hinduism is a faith in which animal reincarnation is accepted. In such, therianthropes are a bit more accepted.
Considering otherkin tends to involve more difficult to believe ideas, it's more commonly rejected, even by the more tolerant circles. So, though otherkin are (usually) more tolerant and open minded, accepting others of a larger variety of groups (so long as they, in turn, are accepted, of course), otherkin are generally considered a distinct group, being only universally accepted by other otherkin.
In such, despite the similarities between the two, they really should be seperate articles. I've noticed the otherkin article changing size and shape a great many times thus far, but hopefully, it will settle into a solid explaination of otherkin. It's the view of the outsider, who's not actually involved in the spiritual subtleties, that suggests merging the two points. Yes, from a distant view, they seem barely distinguishable, but once you're in it, you realize the difference. However, there should be links from one to the other, as point of comparison.
RubyCona 15:03, 28 December 2006 (UTC) RubyCona, Dragon Otherkin RubyCona 15:03, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
I see no evidence that therianthropy is the usual term for this phenomenon, either in folklore or elsewhere. I think the article intends to say that those who consider themselves shape-shifters self-identify as such. It is asserted that they actualy believe this, but I do not see how this could be proven.
The key reason to separate the folklore elements is that they are verifiable and notable by the ordinary standards, and the the presentation of this material should not be distorted by the discussion of the present-day self-identifiers. There is an immense amount of such folklore material, and it would make a good article, and I do suggest having it separate. What the correct name should be is unclear, but I doubt it should be therianthropy; one advantage of not using that name would be avoiding the negative connotations of unverifiable cult associations. I think those who want to keep the parts together are at least partially motivated by a fear of deletion of a separate article on the cult aspect for lack of verification. To someone from outside altogether, this is a good reason to separate the articles, so as not to delete the verifiable parts.
If here are two groups of self-identifiers with different concepts using different names, it would be in accord with WP practice to give them separate articles, as is done for religions and cults of all sorts, assuming they can prove a group identity. DGG 00:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Attention The URL discussed below will attempt to put a trojan (virus) on your computer. Fair warning. NeoFreak 13:38, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
See this edit comparison. Can we safely delete this? As far as I know, the Therian Temple is widely regarded as a hoax website created merely to promote an overly expensive self-published book, and has no standing at all in the therianthrope/otherkin subculture. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 19:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
-"As far as you know"* should not be the limitations of Wikipedia. "Church of Satan" Satanism is widely regarded by "Devil Worshippers" as a "hoax" because they do not recognize existence of a literal anthropomorphic "Satan" deity, yet it IS an existing school of thought. It is questionable how you choose to define "standing" in the 'community'? Is wikidpedia only an informational resource on what is "liked" now? Your personal opinion should not affect the content of an informational resource such as Wikipedia. ~twoCents
The article creator had two days to argue for keeping the material according to policy, and has not come up with anything. I saw another editor had deleted the link, so I went ahead and deleted the rest of the material (since its claim to validity rests mainly on a self-published book, it probably could never have satisfied WP:V anyway). Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 19:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
---Weren't almost ALL religious texts originally self-published?~hm?
I have added the 4th paragraph (as of the posting of this message) because I think that an article which deals with therianthropy and which people are talking about splitting into (subculture) and (mythology) really should make at least some mention of what the subculture is presently, in addition to making some cursory mention of what it is other than people who believe they are part animal, which could be taken in quite a few different ways. I really would that it not be removed without at least some discussion, naturally; I'm certain that some external references could be dredged back up from the carnage embodied in the previous versions. Falcon 06:56, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I think you need to reread the policy and guidline sections. Your basic assumptions such as reliable sources "changing situationally" tells me that you are not familiar with them. NeoFreak 08:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
That's really all that needs to be done. Just please point out that this article is about the mythology of therianthropy and not the subculture. I'm not even saying a subculture article has to be created. But people going on wikipedia to try learn about therianthropy as the subculture may see this and get very confused. Also the links should be made both to categories of the mythology and of the subculture. Because right now there are several links to much less harsh articles on therianthropy, but the stuff in the article seems like it could basically discredit anything that those positive articles say. If somebody goes in to look at those links after wikipedia's already told them it's a clinical disorder then it just seems like the ranting of the insane, or at least mildly disturbed. The article's received a ridiculous amount of editing for trying to make it NPOV, but now there's a fairly obvious POV that therians are either liars, or semi-crazy people. And since after 3 days nobody responded to this, I made a change myself I simply made it perfectly clear that the section about psychiatric therianthropy is an entirely different thing from the therianthropy of the subculture. Hopefully that'll at least get somebody's attention so the matter can be discussed. Anon 16:01, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Monsterous Manual called therianthropes as such; it may have been responsible for its popularization among those who called themselves such. Titanium Dragon 15:53, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Hm, I honestly don't mind that it was deleted. It's not like I put a ton of work into it. I'm just saying that the article should point out that it's about mythology and not the subculture. People that think they turn into animals are indeed crazy, but therians in the subculture do not believe they turn into animals. And in that case I was only making sure to point that out. Also if the article is going to be about psychiatric disorders and mythology then the links should go to those categories. All the links currently go to sites about the subculture when the article has nothing to do with it. And I just made another small edit, because that seems to be the only way to get in a conversation with the people "managing" this article. I was wondering though, how exactly does that book phrase it?. Anon 20:11, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
DreamGuy's deletion of the entire external links section was just reverted (see this edit). I had stopped trying to revert this article because of DreamGuy's continued attempts to argue me down by sheer force on places such as Werewolf fiction, but now that there's another supportive editor, I plan to support the existence of an external links section on this article. Now there are two editors here who think that an external links section is needed, and that DreamGuy's wholesale deletion is not according to policy. I'm just making this note here to keep track of the situation and allow others to comment if they have opinions too. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 18:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Hello, WP:EL is EXTREMELY clear on this point. "Links to be avoided" has "Links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors." Wikifur DOES NOT count as as substantial history of stability and substantial number of editors. Furthermore, the number one thing listed there under to be avoided links is "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article." which certainly applies in this case as well. Anyone claiming "uh. but that page is ust a guideline" misses that MOST things on Wikipedia are "just" guidelines, like evolution is "just" a theory. There's no good reason to link to some minor wiki project, as it wholly fails reliability under other tests. Anyone here wants to disagree, go get the necessary consensus to change [[WP:EL]. Until that gets changed, Wikipedia has established a wide consensus that such links are wholly inappopriate, so it simply cannot be here. DreamGuy 03:34, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
I have posted this as a request to The Mediation Cabal, before this heats up into a full edit war instead of just a pesky case of revertitis on both sides. My request can be read here. -- Thespian 04:43, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Seems the case has since been "closed" again. So, where does that leave us? The dispute's still the same and DreamGuy has never been the sort to back down or compromise from what I've seen in the past. Bryan Derksen 02:22, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Boy, you people don't get how things work here. Mediation is not proper for these kind of disputes, not because "I think I am right" but because mediator is just one person who cannot overrule policy. WP:3O was never an option because there were more than two editors involved. And calling for arbitration? Absolutely ridiculous. You claim I don't know what I am talking about the policies here and then demonstrate you aren't familiar with the policies or guidelines for anything you are talking about here. You guys dispute what WP:EL says, the correct route is to get people from that page to come here and take a look at it, not to flail around making moves that aren't following procedure and then get pissed off when I don't agree to them.
It's true that I end up frequently getting in disputes, but that happens when people not following policy insist on ignoring it and not looking into the proper way to do things. Not to mention I also have some wikistalkers following me around trying to cause grief (like Mermaid of the baltic sea above) because they are still upset about conflicts they lost on other pages. But I also have a great track record for being the side that ends up prevailing in the end, because I know the policies, participate in the talk pages for them, and follow them. The conflict on this page is an absolute no brainer, based upon what WP:EL says and other similar disputes that have been handled recently on this topic. DreamGuy 00:23, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
I have restored the furry.wikia.com link in the External links section after substantial perusal of WP:EL and current practice on the project in general. Hopefully, this explanation will satisfy the concerned parties.
Our guideline on external links does caution against "Links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors." Obviously, some links to other wikis, especially those at Wikia, are tolerated. In fact, there are over 8000 links to *.wikia.com currently in the English Wikipedia. Many are from Talk or User pages to be sure, but a substantial number are included as external links from articles. WikiFur is among those wikis linked, with over 100 such links, several of which have long acceptance at established articles. In fact, WikiFur has an entry in the interwiki map, to which no objections have been raised. There is even an attribution template to be used for GFDL-compliant material with origins at WikiFur (in use for at least one article). It is correct to say that WikiFur is not a reliable source for references (by definition, as it is a wiki) but WP:EL also says links may be considered to "Sites which fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources." It is a specialized sister project, not a competitor, and not one that is prohibited by either the letter or spirit of existing policy and practice. Serpent's Choice 21:24, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
And here we go. [9], [10], [11], [12] - it's ongoing as I write this. DreamGuy, please, you're only going to spread flames everywhere. Bryan Derksen 00:41, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
I've requested intervention over at WP:AN/I#Rapid-fire external link removal by DreamGuy. Bryan Derksen 00:51, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Now that the debate of WikiFur and this article directly has been resolved (for the short term) I would suggest carrying any further discussion of the application of WP:EL to WikiFur over to that discussion page, Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Wikifur. This way it can be resolved in a centralized and finale manner. NeoFreak 01:11, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
For the moment, my reply is in this diff but I hope to add more soon. Please be patient and thank you. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 16:17, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
The WikiFur link from this page plainly violated WP:EL and was frankly embarrassing. The guideline is clear that such links should never be used not just because the blatant conflict of interest, not just because the Wiki in question does not meet the Wiki criteria of WP:EL but because the link was totally lame, without any semblance of being a reliable source that added value over and above this article. 2005 03:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
It may be of interest to mention uses earlier than the 1901 therianthropy ref cited. The historian and philosopher of religion Cornelis Petrus Tiele of Leiden is credited ( here in 1895) with having dubbed certain religions therianthropic, so I looked it up and found it in 1892 here and in 1897 here with etymology. Based on how he used it apparently without definition in 1892, it must have been known at the time. In 1899 here he defines it, so maybe it wasn't as known as he had hoped. Perhaps the mention of religious historian Mircea Eliade should be supplemented with Tiele. Dicklyon 06:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
Who has the Cohen Werewolves book? What does it actually say? I have a hard time believing it talks about usenet, so at least part of that paragraph likely needs to be cleaned up. Dicklyon 06:58, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
What on earth is the picture of Horus doing on this page? Egyptian gods have no place here -- the Egyptians didn't actually /believe/ their gods had animal heads, they were only portrayed that way to assist the illiterate in differentiating between them (the gods). Archtemplar 23:10, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Here are some orphaned sources that were listed at the bottom of lycanthopy, much of the general shape-shifting info having been trasferred hither: Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 22:10, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
It is very offensive to actual Therians to have this article use the term "Internet subculture" to describe an entire group of people's real life beliefs and identities.
Therianthropy is a form of self-identification in regards to personal beliefs, not a "subculture", as if it were a fashion or genre like punk or goth. It is ESPECIALLY not only an "internet" phenomenon.
To say that Therianthropy/Therianism is an "Internet subculture" just because some of the people happen to communicate online is akin to saying that Christianity is a "literary subculture" because it happened to be written down in a book. Also the term Therianthrope was used in this sense as early as 1915, long before the internet.
Secondly, There is no reference anywhere in the article to any actual Therian-related Organizations such as Therian Temple or books about Therian-related occultism such as the Therian Bible ( ISBN 978-0-557-01649-5). Even if it (as noted above) the group is small (although we have no way of knowing that for sure one way or the other), it being the first Therianthropic "religious" group is certainly word noting if Therianthropy itself is considered notable enough for an article.
Also the person above saying their (TT) site has malicious code is obviously lying-I just went to the Therian Temple site and there is nothing even abnormal about the code, not even any ads or pop-ups. We cannot just leave notable people or groups out of Wikipedia just because certain editors may not agree with their beliefs--I mean we have plenty of articles on various Nazis, but (hopefully) not everyone agrees with them.-- Chicagomusicfan ( talk) 10:54, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Therianthropy as mentioned in the above article is a " Therianthropy as a subculture does not have any central dogma or tenets, nor any recognized authority", and yet here we are being bombarded with definitions that are uncited. Yes, I see the classical definition listed, but nowhere is anyone trying to show the reality of therianthropy -- and are quite frankly, mocking it.
The validity of portions of the third paragraph under 'Subculture social structure' is uncited, and frankly unfounded in the therian community. Therianthropy is in noway connected with the 'Bears', and is not wrought by video games (Please cite a scientific study, while I will agree it could be, I ask for your proof). There is no interconnection to anything referred to in this third paragraph, but possibly the " Werewolf: The Apocalypse" (remotely if that).
Terrorwolf 22:47, 26 November 2005 (UTC) TerrorWolf Pennsylvania State University
I will agree that I see no real connection between Therianthropy and role gaming except that some Therians might incidentally role game. Of all the Therians I know, only one might be described as a "Gamer" and the incidental gaming that the others have done does not seem to focus on Werewolves. Therians are just about the most "reality based" people I have ever run into.
As for Bears, I have noticed a lot of crossover between the Furry community and the Bear community but I don't know a single Therian associated in any way with the Bear community (which is rather strange since I do know several Gay Therians).
I don't see much connection between the Therian community and Otherkin except, perhaps the Draconics, and there does seem to be a subset of the Dragon community that seems to gravitate toward the Therian community.
Actually, though, Terrorwolf, it's going to be hard to produce much in the way of scholarly material related to therianthropy. The modern community didn't exist earlier than 1993 and Therians are a hardy bunch that simply hasn't presented much in the clinical arena and when they have, it has usually been for tangetial problems - not anything obviously related to Therianthropy.
There is weak research being carried on now but the methods available to individual Therians and other people currently interested have obvious shortcomings (small and nonrepresentative samples, etc.) and can only be used as pilot research. Nothing has had the time to appear in peer reviewed literature. Wolf VanZandt 11/28/05.
I would like to point out that as of 08/04/13 there have been quite a few thesis' - peer reviewed literature and lectures on therianthropy published by universities, and to see my suggestions below as to using the new published research for creating a seperate therianthropy community/subculture page. Emily 08/04/2013
Thanks, Emily. I try to keep up with the substantive research being done on therianthropy. I'm waiting for three reports to come out now, so there is a lot of interest in the academic world. I generally report my reviews on The Therian Timeline and have just finished (for the time being) a section on Therian psychology. I'll be working on sociology next - since I live in an intentional community with 6 other Weres and in a larger community of about 50, I'm getting plenty of anecdotal material. I don't get by here too often, though. The quality of therianthropological research has improved considerably since the last time I posted. I've made the statement several times in support of therianthropological researchers that they are working with some special situations that hamper their progress, such as difficulty in obtaining representative samples, but you have to start somewhere and I'm very appreciative of what has been done and I see some of the early errors being corrected, which is pretty much how sociological research proceeds. WolfVanZandt ( talk) 19:29, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
First of all, my edit may have been POV due to wording, but the fact is still true: therianthropy hasn't been studied, and therefore cannot be dismissed or confirmed. Second of all, why on earth is there more information here than on the article? -- ConservapediaUndergroundResistor ( talk) 21:11, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Why the relationship between trance (altered state of consciousness) and the therianthropic vision mostly painted in rock art and depict by many shamans has not been discussed in this article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.2.119.211 ( talk) 12:14, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
Per my edit summary, I removed this section of the lede (as well as made some minor syntax changes):
Common day therianthropy (According to research) is a belief someone's spirit is crossed with another. Therians (Short for people who are therianthropes) do NOT go through physical shifts as what above states, they may go through metal shifts though. I do not know how the explanation above would relate to common day therianthropy.
I'm not trying to outright remove this idea from the wiki, but don't think that the tone or parentheticals are appropriate for the wiki. If anyone wants to put it back in, I suggest rewriting it to be more in line with the rest of the article (no first person POV, etc). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Havensfire ( talk • contribs) 23:58, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
I know this has been suggested previously, but I'd like to bring it up again, and with some fresh ideas and sources. I'd like to suggest that the therianthropy (self identification) part of the current therianthropy article should link to a main article on the topic, constructed using the following sources (although yes, I'll reference them properly if we do make the actual article):
These are all either documentaries, books, news articles, thesis' published by universities or lectures given in universities. Would these sources be considered all suitable and valid to be used? I can provide links to any of them if wished. Does anybody object to the change, now that it can be argued that therianthropy is a studied phenomena - considering the anthropological and theological papers? Would this move be immediately reversed if proceeded with, and under what grounds? Any objections to me just steamrolling ahead and getting something basic hashed out? Thanks! Emily 08/04/2013
Current list of references (last chance to complain guys! (who am I kidding, I'm sure it'll have to be redone afterwards))
If you read Gary Melhorn's The Esoteric Codex: Shapeshifters, you'll see that the first paragraph in 131.1: Human Shapshifting sounds awfully familiar. Too familiar. As in, it's plagiarism. Word for word right in there, and it's not even in the references. Just wanted to bring that to your attention. 72.45.37.29 ( talk) 01:29, 16 March 2016 (UTC)Cecilia 3/15/16
I'm a bit surprised no reference is made to the silkie myths of the Western Isles. Everybody got to be somewhere! ( talk) 01:23, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
I have to agree with previous commentary that this should really be two pages. One about therianthropy as a concept in mythology and one about the modern subculture. While I appreciate that these are related topics, having read some of the material available on both sides, it seems quite clear that they are heavily distinct, with the subculture being based only tenuously on the mythological concept. There are completely sufficient sources to produce two separate pages much like the pages for Vampire Lifestyle and Vampire are separate. If nothing else, this would hopefully stem the constant flow of vandalism that this page experiences. I appreciate that it would be a big job to make such a drastic change but, from the activity on this page, one feels confident that there are plenty of keen contributors who would be up for the challenge. Tommarquand 10:14, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
The children of Lir are incorrectly described in the illustration. They did not have the power to turn into swans. They were turned into swans by a spell cast over them by their wicked stepmother.
Rconroy ( talk) 10:21, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
I'm here of one who believes something about this page should drastically change. Specificly about the notion of Modern Therianthropy.
I understand that Therianthropy and Modern Therianthropy (aka the subculture/experience/identification from more recently) are two different things. The issue however is that the majority of the Modern Therian community just uses 'therianthropy', ends up at this page and gets confused. Not only because currently 'Therian' is categorized under 'Psychiatric Aspects', which gives the impression it's something psychiatric that needs psychiatric help and therefore does not only harm to the Modern Therian community but also to parents being unfairly putten into mental healthcare by their parents who visit this wikipedia page.
I believe that therefore, Modern Therianthropy eitherway has to be mentioned in this wikipedia page. Further info on it either being given underneath it in it's own section (to clearly seperate it from regular Therianthropy) or in another wikipedia page (about that, a little further more info why that's a problem)through a link.
I personally am going to seperate therian from clinical lycanthropy under a different heading, simply to undo the damage of people unfairly lumping it in with the psychiatric condition. Because at this point there has been no clear indicators or proof that Modern Therianthropy is psychiatric or a mental condition.
But, Modern Therianthropy by now (2 july 2020) has a known history of 27 years old. The first online mentions afterall having be publicied on Alt.Horror.Werewolves (usenet group) in 1993. Modern Therianthropy clearly exists as a concept and experience and more so as an online phenomen (community, subculture, ..). It deserves being recognized and given information about. Even if just for the many people who stream here onto 'Therianthropy' and do not find what they are looking for or leave confused and misinformed (thinking it's a psychiatric condition)
I wrote a detailed edit, sourcing to original archived pages of therianthropy being first discussed on the internet. Including discussion, date, place and person. The Therian Community expressed to, for once, be satisfied with the correct representation and historical clarity. This sadly was undone because of the sources not being reliable. Appearently these have to be something along the lines of someone else talking about those first discussions rather than litterally the archived first discussions.
The Modern Therian community is too small (yet heavily growing), but most of all not given attention from outsiders other than regular and curious people. No scientists writing paper about them, no trustworthy sites writing about them,.. Not without trolling, saying completely inaccurate things, negative subjective opinions etc. By this, there simply are non of such sites or books written by others about Modern Therianthropy. By this, it would be impossible to ever have a page about modern therianthropy. Because all that exists of it, is writings on forums, talk about experiences (as it is an experience/belief/identity/..)by individuals on forums, archives of the first ever mentions of it or its terminology etc. But, non of these can be used as a source as it's multimedia.
In short, one cannot ever write about an online community. Because of being forbidden to use online social material (such as forum posts), even if it only exists there: on forum posts. As long as it isn't so wellknown, that it is written about by reliable outsiders. Other than to troll or ridicule or without being too vague.
There are a few websites out there that are collectives of information (such as linking & talking about the archived discussions of modern therianthropy in 1993), but all are owned by therians and may still be found to be too subjective. example: http://www.theriantimeline.com/ , http://projectshift.therianthropy.info/, https://therian.fandom.com (why: A; are independant, B. have editorial oversight and C. fact-check for accuracy and are no usergenerated content but rather talk about the user generated content, include archived material etc)
But, I don't believe these could ever be enough to 'source' everything. Exactly because modern therianthropy can only be found (loose from the in-real-life happenings ofcourse which aren't exaclty able to be sourced) on forums, through usergenerated content etc.
So, even if I did put time into creating its own page for Modern Therianthropy, lose from Therianthropy (but linked within it to help prevent the confusion) I'd never have enough sources to link I believe.
Anyone has any thoughts on how to fix this issue? Or advice? PD PinkDolphin ( talk) 21:00, 2 July 2020 (UTC)PD PinkDolphin
The "bear shirts" of Scandanavia (I think). Not a word about them! Don't see too much here from Africa either. Vendrov ( talk) 06:43, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
Voice of scientists 103.118.50.71 ( talk) 00:47, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
This section seems to rely on a single source of potentially dubious quality. Kelryn ( talk) 13:08, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
There are hardly any references for this section. I've never edited on wikipedia, so it'd be great if someone could find + add references or else alter the text to only include referenced content :) 2407:7000:A2DA:5000:4DC6:EAA4:4FB4:6D9C ( talk) 11:53, 14 June 2023 (UTC)