litphoria

message

You're not signed-in. If you're new, why don't you take a moment to read the site's intro?
View litphoria Introduction

Feedback ยท "Raptor" species is very misleading (needs discussion)

I feel that having a species titled "Raptor" that includes all extinct theropods is extremely misleading, as raptor could also mean modern raptor birds. In addition, calling it Raptor implies that it refers solely to -raptor dinosaurs (velociraptor, utahraptor, astroraptor, microraptor, etc) or simply dinosaurs in the dromaeosaur family. Instead, this species should be renamed to Theropods, or perhaps just simply Dinosaurs (to leave room for further specifications in the personalized description).

meta info

endorsement points: 0

created: 19 July 15 at 10:01 PM (build: 7/17/2015 2:30 AM beta)

Velus

Current description of Raptor:

A character who appears to belong to an exinct therapod group, including raptors and tyrannosaurs.

In its current form, if Wikipedia can be believed, this is indeed misleading: there is no such group. Raptors are Dromaeosauridae, Tyrannosaurs are Tyrannosauridae. The closest thing they have in common is that they are Theropods — they don't share a group between themselves within Theropods.

This should really be Therapod, or Dinosaurs if we don't care to distinguish Raptors and Tyrannosaurs from the various four-legged dinosaurs, but it sounds like whoever suggested this did want to distinguish. But then it seems there are non-Theropod raptor-looking things like the Eoraptor.

Wrecked Avent Site Administrator

I don't remember how old this particular species was, it was possible it was added back when we were attempting to give everything as friendly a name as possible for search. No one would think to type in theropod to find scalie dinosaurs.

This is less of an issue now that we have aliasing, and we can have a 'correct' name for it while having more 'incorrect but friendly' names for it.

Velus

The raptor suggestion came in mid June and endorsed recently. I'm not aware of it belonging to any particular feedback trend.

Ares

The problem with separating avians from non-avians comes when they bisect within the same family. We could say "theropod" as the species and in the description of it describe them as ground-dwelling dinosaurs, but that would exclude, like you said, archaeopteryx, as well as even a few species of raptors that are flight-capable, such as microraptor. Since, obviously, microraptor is still a theropod and would fit in with the original "raptor" description this wouldn't work. Archaeopteryx and microraptors were strange little outliers to the general order of things, though, and I think that saying "Dinosaur" as a species would still easily cover them since they fit right into that description anyway.

However, I think what you may be trying to get at is that pterosaurs are definitely very different from what we're trying to describe here, but pterosaurs aren't even dinosaurs, so they shouldn't be included anyway, and if someone wants to play as a pterosaur character they should have a separate species altogether. This is getting off topic, though.

My point still stands that I think saying "raptor" as a species and then, in the description, saying that "raptor" describes all theropods is very misleading and just downright odd. The best way to rework this into a species that makes sense would be to broaden it to "Dinosaur" which would also solve the problem of people wanting to play as non-theropod dinosaurs who would not have an accurate species name. Logistics of avian dinosaurs aside, they're still technically dinosaurs so fitting them into that species wouldn't be a problem. There will always be problems with inclusion, but you can get away with a lot of miscategorizing since a lot of people use "dinosaur" as an umbrella term for pterosaurs and a lot of aquatic species during the time period anyway. If people are searching for any character before the K-Pg extinction, basically, "dinosaur" is probably how they'll phrase it, whether or not it was actually a dinosaur (such as pterosaurs, mosasaurus, plesiosaurs, etc).

Velus

So Yute, what do you suggest we do with the name or description of the category? You suggested it and you know what you're going for so your insight would be valuable here.

Lich Community Manager

Dinosaur has been opened for endorsement. We'd appreciate suggestion on what the new description should be, or else Raptor might just get merged into Dinosaur.

Wrecked Avent Site Administrator

We have two profiles using Raptor and one using Dinosaur. This should probably just be merged into Dinosaur for now.

Quillan

This shouldn't be a thing, dinosaur got implemented.

  Got something to say? Why don't you register and participate?
Litphoria has a unique community feedback system, where the community decides what profile options are available, and what order new features are developed.

I want my voice heard! tell me more!