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Archive 1Archive 2

fantasy game usage

What about its use in many fantasy based genres, the dire wolf seems to be a constant reference to a greater version, or form, of the normal wolf. I was searching for the fantasy variant, and have yet to find any good references...

Seems like a good idea. The content from Dire Wolves should be merged into this article, perhaps as a new section on fictional occurrences.Deli nk 21:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I found some, but I can't add it as a new section, even on this discussion page, because someone keeps deleting it as soon as I add it. Check this page's history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.29.147.189 (talk) 20:51, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

What mass extinction?

The current text states until its extinction about 10,000 years ago during a time of mass extinction of many large North American mammals. However, on the page linked to for Mass extinction there is nothing about any mass exctinctions about 10,000 years ago.

Holocene extinction —Preceding unsigned comment added by GJaxon (talk • contribs) 19:39, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

New Pictures

I have some new picture that I'd like to put on the artical. -- Hurricane Devon (Talk), September 17, 2005

Prehistoric mammal category thoughts

My personal opinion is that while it is good to have the distinctions between the different Epochs, the category of prehistoric mammals should still be included as many in the general public are unaware of which specific Epoch their mammal was from. Essentially, it would be like having two card catalog references. I agree that the Epoch distinctions are more accurate and if I had to chose one or the other, that would be the one I would keep. But I think there is still value in maintaining the old cat. Or perhaps prehistoric mammals could become just a list of, provided all of hte current mammals ended up on the list. Any thoughts?

--aremisasling 21:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Capitalization and disambiguation

UtherSRG, the capitalization style is meant for article titles, not for refering to animals in the body of the article. When you reverted the capitalizations, you also brought back the ambiguated links that I had corrected, so I reverted it back. If you must recapitalize everything, I won't fight you, but please leave the links alone or pipe them to avoid redirects. Coyoty 21:36, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

UtherSRG, if you insist on capitalizing animals, at least please be consistent about it. A mix of capitalized and uncapitalized names looks really ugly and unprofessional in an encyclopedia. Lets have some concensus about this. Coyoty 04:03, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Cultural references

Does the song "Dire Wolf" have anything to do with dire wolves other than the title? If not, should it be included on name association alone? Coyoty 02:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it does, the description doesn't indicate any. If there is none, I would support removing it. MarcusGraly 22:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Here are the lyrics: [link to copyvio website removed]: It does mention wolves a fair amount. MarcusGraly 18:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Dire Wolf is a song by the famous Canadian band "The Tragically Hip" Canking 15:22, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Or, you know, the Grateful Dead. They most likely did it first. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.141.107.24 (talk) 03:21, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Dire wolves (called direwolves) are quite important in George R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series (and probably in the TV adaptation too). I think there should be a "Cultural references" section (I haven't added it myself because I see it's under discussion). — Preceding unsigned comment added by AleksanderVatov (talk • contribs) 16:11, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

A "In Popular Culture“ section is neither necessary, nor desirable if it is to be merely a laundry list of monster guest appearances. Furthermore, if "direwolves" are so important to A Song of Ice and Fire, then why are they only mentioned once in the entire wikipedia article?-Mr Fink (talk) 17:02, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
Just a guess, but that might be because the series is more than 5,000 pages (so far), and the synopsis in the article is four paragraphs. That they're mentioned at all is significant. I'm in favor of adding an "In Popular Culture" section. ShadowPhox (talk) 18:28, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
Among other things, A) are the "direwolves" of A Song of Ice and Fire actually Canis dirus, or are they merely your stereotypical fantasy giant grey wolves? B) A one-word mention does not make for a very convincing argument, and C) How does A Song of Ice and Fire color culture's perception of Canis dirus?--Mr Fink (talk) 19:03, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Mythic beasts

I took the liberty of removing claims that various wolf like mythic beasts were in fact Dire Wolves. These claims seem to based on the myth that a Dire Wolf was a huge Grey Wolf and are unverifiable. MarcusGraly 22:12, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Citations

The article claims that dire wolves were smaller than grey wolves, but I have heard otherwise, from the Encyclopedia Britannica, for example. Should someone change this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 139.140.194.172 (talk • contribs) .

Yes, if you can find a reliable source for the information. - UtherSRG (talk) 11:07, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

"Misconception"

The article states that it is a misconception that dire wolves were bigger than grey wolves, then goes on to say that they were in fact bigger. Based on the numbers in the gray wolf article, the biggest dire wolves weighed half again as much as the biggest grey wolves. That seems like a pretty significant size difference--not a misconception at all. I'm going to change. Nareek 21:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

--It is a misconcepton. According to the links on the page itself, dire wolves were only slightly larger than gray wolves (110 lbs). Some people have been playing too much D&D. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.175.119.20 (talk) 15:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense to say that dire wolves were larger/chunkier than gray wolves, but that they weighed 110 lbs--which is right in the middle of the average weight range for the gray wolf. So was it larger/chunkier or not? 70.213.43.203 (talk) 23:59, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
110 lbs. is not the average for either the gray wolf (except possibly in some parts of Alaska or Siberia) or the dire wolf.
Most places, a gray wolf (timber wolf subspecies) is something like 60-75 pounds. The possible weight range is huge, though (20 pounds for an Arabian Wolf subspecies up to a record-setting Alaskan giant of 180 lbs). Since 100 pounds is right in the middle of that range, people tend to think that wolves average around 100 lbs. or a little more. Especially in temperate latitudes, they do not.
The dire wolf does not average that weight either. [This museum website] says 125-175 pounds. [This] uses the 110 pounds, but that is the smallest estimate you will find. I tend to see that more often as a low-end figure. Vultur (talk) 19:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Images

I wonder if anyone can find some public license images generated by a computer for this article. That would be great. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mathchem271828 (talk • contribs) 20:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

capitalization

"Grey Wolf" and "Dire Wolf" is not a proper name - I don't believe it should be capitalized. ClockworkTroll 21:27, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Neither the title nor the name in the text should be capitalized. I'll change this if there are no objections. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Night Gyr (talk • contribs) 17:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC).

I object. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:49, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Why? It's nonstandard to capitalize species names. We don't capitalize rainbow trout or human, and it looks weird to me to capitalize common words. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:40, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Ah, but we should. The rationale at WP:BIRD is sound. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:03, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
The capitalization convention in WP:BIRD is based on the conventions of ornithological journals, and it's not clear that journals about mammals have the same convention. Even if it were, it's dubious to extend the convention of a specialist literature--where it may make sense to capitalize only one kind of common noun, because it's the particular class of common noun that you're interested in--to a general encyclopedia, where you have an interest in every category of common noun. I think the bird capitalization rule is a mistake and should not be a precedent mammal articles should follow. Nareek 12:59, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
When, exactly, did wolf become a proper noun? I suggest a move to Dire wolf (which is now one of the stupidest & most needless redirects I've seen). TREKphiler hit me ♠ 10:14, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree with the move and have added a move template. SpectrumDT (talk) 22:09, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
This was rejected once, and I will continue to oppose such a move. Please read and understand the rationale at WP:BIRD. Also, there is a stalemate-concensus not to move mammal articles. - UtherSRG (talk) 23:30, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
The rules at WP:BIRD are specific to ornithology and are stated not to be applicable to other topics. Those rules exist because of a standardization movement within the ornithology community. That movement is not relevant to other communities. Meanwhile we have incoherent capitalization for article titles and body text. The inconsistency is ugly, looks like illiteracy, and has no basis in standard practice. This sophomoric insistence on capitalizing common nouns is ugly, looks like illiteracy, and has no basis in standard practices. While the ornithological community’s rationale and recommendations may make sense for them, applied more broadly that reasoning means any noun should be capitalized because any noun is a specialized term for some field of study. It’s nonsense. Within scholarly circles, writers can always resort to genus/species to disambiguate if necessary—and lo and behold, species is not even capitalized by convention throughout the biological world. I do not see any legalistic or rational reason to bow to UtherSRG’s personal notion of How The World Should Work.Strebe (talk) 00:04, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

See also?

The article has under "See also" a link to Extinct animals in popular culture. However, that article does not exist. I think it is very stupid to reference a non-existent article like this one, so I'm removing it. I will also add a few real "See also"s while I'm at it. Garnet avi 11:22, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Reference

There is a reference so I will remove tag. Enlil Ninlil 19:40, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The paper sourcing the cladogram/timeline on this page, Tedford et al. (2009), suggests only slightly earlier than Rancholabrean as a start for C. dirus, i.e. half a million years. Also, Dundas 1999 http://www.fresnostate.edu/csm/ees/documents/facstaff/dundas/Publication/Dundas-1999.pdf (which should really be given as a good ref here) also suggests the same start date, while mentioning some uncertain earlier fossils. The source of the 1.8 Ma figure is not given on the page as far as I can tell.Strangetruther (talk) 23:20, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

why "dire"?

Is there (or was there, at the time it was named) evidence that this species was fiercer than the modern wolf? --Trovatore (talk) 01:05, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

"dire" is just a word. because the animal is only known from fossils, theres no way to known if it was fiercer or not, the same way most of the "terrible lizards" were likely not terrible at all 69.233.5.249 (talk) 20:09, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Maybe the term "dire wolf" is older than the discovery of the fossils to which it has been assigned by taxonomists - in legend for instance. Dire wolves appear frequently in fantasy novels, and artistic license means their descriptions don't always match the fossil record. In the A Song of Ice and Fire series, for instance, they are described as being proportionally taller and leaner than normal wolves, which is kind of the opposite of reality. It's not clear to me if authors are borrowing the term from biology or from some other source that is of older origin. SharkD  Talk  10:31, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Most likely not. A lot of fantasy and RPG bestiaries are inspired by paleontology. Serpent-people, Voormis, and Gnophkeh (inspired by dinosaurs and cavemen respectively) of the Cthulhu mythos for example. And early paleontologists tend to be... theatrical in their naming. It's interesting to note that the etymological origins of the English word dire probably points back to greek deinos, 'terrible', the same word used for Dinosaurs. That said, the origin of the word Mammoth points to the discovery of its fossils long before modern paleontology (they were believed to be gigantic creatures who burrowed like moles). Furthermore Ice Age bones of Mammoth, Elephants, and allies most probably originated the ubiquitous folklore of Cyclops in cultures surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. The same thing can be said for the pancultural existence of Dragons which probably originated from chance excavations of their fossils compounded with encounters with large snakes, crocodiles, and sea animals.
Wolves do feature prominently in a lot of mythologies, but were never referred to as 'dire' and aren't differentiated as a species, merely as unusual or divine individuals (e.g. the Norse Fenrir).--Astepintooblivion (talk) 10:10, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

a quick google books search turned up three uses of the term "dire wolf" by famous poets published before the discovery of the fossils. Interestingly, two different dictionary sites have etymology notes claiming the "origin" or "first use" of "dire wolf" was in "1920-25" or "1925". I attempted to post the sources on this talk page, but the information was quickly deleted. Please view the history.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.29.147.189 (talk) 21:52, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

That thread was deleted because you did not bother to explain what context they were supposed to be in at the time.--Mr Fink (talk) 22:11, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
I think the species name "dirus" might be a give-away to what's oldest. FunkMonk (talk) 22:03, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
The fact that the species is named in latin has nothing to do with how long ago it was recognized, since latinized names are used for all formal species classifications, even if the name otherwise would have nothing to do with latin.

A 'dire wolf' is both a literal adjective description and an analogy in old cultural forms. Generally wolves, like all intelligent predators, are actually very careful about what they attack, because suffering a debilitating injury can quickly end their ability to hunt, and thus their life. If a wolf (or wolfpack) is facing starvation, however, they can become recklessly aggressive (like other predators, or humans for that matter), and are thus far more ferocious and frightening. D&D or the fantasy genre in general (sadly much modern fantasy flows directly out of D&D) originally absorbed the idea of the 'dire wolf' either from the prehistoric species, or from mistaking, somewhere along the way, the old cultural description of a 'state' of wolf with a 'species' of wolf. I would guess the latter, since the attributes of a 'dire' wolf generally seem to suggest greatly increased ferocity. 70.95.68.214 (talk) 11:48, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Crossbreeding with the Gray Wolf?

Is it known if the dire wolf was capable of crossbreeding with the gray wolf? Are there any fossil specimens of possible hybrids? 64.180.93.200 (talk) 22:04, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

If there are, then they have not been found or published yetMariomassone (talk) 22:11, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Except that one song still doesn't justify the inclusion of a trivia list of non-notable to semi-notable media guest appearances.--Mr Fink (talk) 19:00, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

These links are wiki type links because that is the most available source for me to mention here, obviously hard copy game guides would be better citations, but at the moment I wanted to point out that this is definatly a section that could easily be added to this article for completeness sake. Cheers Keetanii (talk) 12:21, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

The "Popular Culture" section should not be a collection of trivial cameos; it should be a discussion of how the public looks at the subject, or non-trivial roles the subject has played in various works of fiction, i.e., as a protagonist or major antagonist, not as cannon-fodder or summonable accessory.--Mr Fink (talk) 13:26, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
In that case, the dire wolves of Game of Thrones might be included, seeing as each of them has a name and plays a role in the storyline. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.134.46.140 (talk) 14:08, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
In the spirit of 'be bold," I added a reference to Game of Thrones use of direwolves. I'll let others work out whether other references qualify. Frimmin (talk) 04:11, 20 October 2013 (UTC)Frimmin

Invalid reference

The first reference seems to direct to an article about the Kenton Joel Carnegie wolf attack and not anything about the evolution of the animal in question. Can someone confirm this? 134.219.176.130 (talk) 15:35, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Believe it was this addition by Dark hyena. Not sure why this is still in there. 134.219.176.130 (talk) 15:50, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Image Scale

Though I don't have one, I think it would be very helpful if this article included, for comparison, at least one image that contained a Dire Wolf along with an object of known size (a gray wolf for example) in order to give the reader a sense of scale. I know that the creature's size is listed in the article. However, as size is the main difference between this animal and modern wolves, a reference object would be very nice to have.Originalname37 (Talk?) 15:12, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

An image with both a human and a modern wolf would probably be best. Not everyone knows how large a wolf is. FunkMonk (talk) 16:07, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
What about a comparison with a familiar dog breed? Kortoso (talk) 18:15, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

“Description” vs. anything descriptive

FunkMonk has several times changed the “Morphology” (and earlier) headings to “Description”. I have several times reverted it. My reasoning, as stated on each edit is:

  • The whole article is a “description”. The word is flaccid. It does not refer specifically to anatomy, physiology, or morphology. It refers to anything. It’s useless.
  • Other articles use more descriptive terms. There is no standardization.

In his last revert, FunkMonk defended his edit with the summary, “Which other articles? Look practically everywhere else, description is used for anatomical details.” So I went off to look. I checked exactly five articles. Not one of them uses “Description”:

  • Dog: Physical characteristics
  • Cat: Anatomy, Physiology
  • Chimpanzee: Anatomy and physiology
  • Giraffe: Appearance and anatomy
  • Civet: Physical characteristics

This is getting tiring and it’s terribly pointless. What exactly is the objection to using the right word? Oxford American Dictionary:

morphology |môrˈfäləjē|

noun ( pl. -gies) the study of the forms of things, in particular

• Biology the branch of biology that deals with the form of living organisms, and with relationships between their structures.

Strebe (talk) 04:26, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Featured articles about extinct animals almost uniformly use "description". FunkMonk (talk) 07:40, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
1. What use is the distinction between extinct or extant in choosing a word here?
2. How is “Description” better? I’m here to improve things, not propagate mindlessness.
3. Partial list of featured articles on extinct animals not using flaccid Description: Subfossil lemur, Mesopropithecus, Babakotia. Furthermore many of those that do use “Description” also use “Paleobiology” or some other header that in practice moves a lot of the physical description into other sections, with “Description” being a summary.
You are obliged to honor an article’s precedent when no standards exist and when changing it does not improve it. Description was your change, not the original. Strebe (talk) 16:26, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Forgot about this. You give three examples of FAs all written by the same user. That is hardly representative. FunkMonk (talk) 05:05, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
Look, I didn’t check who wrote them and it doesn’t matter in any case. Other people have edited those articles as well and apparently they were happy with the apt headers. If you need a “representative sample” then go collect it and be prepared to defend it. You are the one trying to change what already works. You have not addressed my other observation that many of the other articles that use “Description” do not use it for anatomy and physiology. You have not explained what the significance is between extinct and extant that should warrant different terminology. You have not explained how a more vague word is better. All you’ve said is “other articles do this”, which is only a good reason if it’s standard. But it’s very clearly not. Strebe (talk) 06:05, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
The point is, it is a mere style issue. Whoever writes the article decides. If I decide to expand this article, it is bad practice of you to contradict me, if there is no reason for it based on actual policy and guidelines. I can show you dozens of featured articles that do it my way, including several I've written myself, so please, don't try to lecture me. FunkMonk (talk) 14:23, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
I have no idea what you’re talking about. You did not write the article and the original authors did not use your flaccid “Description”. Originally it was “Characteristics”. This is the change to “Morphology”. You’re the one trying to change things, and for the worse. It is bad practice to use vague, uninformative words. Don’t try to lecture me. Strebe (talk) 21:51, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
When I get a good source, I might, and there's nothing you can do about that (unless you quit arguing and do some actual work here). And no, the point is, it is not "for the worse" when dozens of featured articles are written this way, it is a style issue. Every single featured dinosaur and bird article use "description", for example. As for mammals, woolly mammoth, which I wrote, does too. FunkMonk (talk) 21:55, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
Threat duly noted—by many. Those dinosaur articles were changed by a very small cast of people, without discussion and generally before 2008. Now we’re stuck with it forever and you’re trying to infect articles about other taxa with that rubbish? Poor practices, repeated often, do not amount to good practices. Pointing at stuff you wrote as a model of good practices is particularly unconvincing. Aaaaand, you’re arguing, in case you hadn’t noticed. Strebe (talk) 02:30, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
Lol, yes, I'm threatening you with expanding the article. What will you do, report me to an admin? So I'll just do that, one of these days, and who knows, might as well just get this sucker to FA status now we're at it. And you seem to forget the 100+ featured bird articles. FunkMonk (talk) 02:59, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Ok folks.... let's take a bit of time off here, eh? Your argument is not doing either of you, or the rest of us, any good. Time to take this to a neutral third party or parties. One of you, go grab a mediator or make a request for comments to help settle this disagreement. - UtherSRG (talk) 02:43, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I think expanding the article would be more helpful. FunkMonk (talk) 02:59, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

There is some kind of cultural relevance of this animal, right?

I think this animal is referenced in Game of Thrones, which seems odd if it's extinct. Is there some reason for that? Why doesn't the article mention it at all, even in passing? This is one of the few times a Wikipedia article has failed to enlighten me about a cultural phenomenon. Censorship at work? 24.55.17.191 (talk) 02:22, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Just because something is not mentioned does not mean "censorship is at work." Game of Thrones' "dire wolves" aren't mentioned in the popular culture section because a) how do we know that the author specifically means Canis dirus, and not simply the stock fantasy large wolf? and b) no one has made an effort to explain how the Game of Thrones' "dire wolves" are non-trivial.--Mr Fink (talk) 04:17, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
Lol at "censorship". What would the purpose be? To undermine the popularity of "Game of Thrones" by not mentioning it in a slightly related Wikipedia article? Good luck! FunkMonk (talk) 05:01, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
I added a reference to the Game of Thrones presentation of the "direwolves" with quotes. It's a fantasy universe; their direwolves may or may not be La Brea's dire wolves, but it's still a significant reference, as millions of readers and viewers are encountering animals that seem to be named after the dire wolf. Hey, it's what brought me to this page, and I suspect I'm not the only one. Frimmin (talk) 04:26, 20 October 2013 (UTC)Frimmin
This article deals specifically and only with the prehistoric animal, Canis dirus, and not with the stock fantasy "dire wolf," which is nothing more than an enlarged, magical grey wolf. That, and other wikis are not considered reliable or appropriate references to use in Wikipedia.--Mr Fink (talk) 04:53, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Confusing lede and morphology

I found this very confusing:

"...roughly the size of the extant gray wolf, but with a heavier build" and "the dire wolf is estimated to have been 8% smaller than the modern timber wolf, and of equal size to the gray wolf, but heavier built."

versus

"Despite superficial similarities to the gray wolf, the two species differed significantly. Today’s largest gray wolves would have been of similar size to an average dire wolf; the largest dire wolves would have been considerably larger than any modern gray wolf. The dire wolf is calculated to weigh 25% more than living gray wolves.[2]"

What's going on? Timber wolves are gray wolves, [[1]], and the last snippet is confusingly written. Superficially similar, but completely different and 25% heavier? Or 8% smaller, yet the same size as the big wolves, and bigger than average gray wolves?

Could an expert please clean this up? Frimmin (talk) 03:28, 20 October 2013 (UTC)Frimmin

There is not a single contradiction in anything you singled out. It’s not clear to me why you’re having trouble with those passages, but practices like translating “significant differences” into “completely different” might have something to do with it. Strebe (talk) 08:04, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
That said, going back to the original papers, it’s clear there is no consensus on anything this precise, and the article’s attempt to reconcile all this is WP:SYNTH. The only real consensus is that the dire wolf is “about the same size” (height and length) as the modern gray wolf and about 25% more massive. Strebe (talk) 22:34, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
And 8% smaller, too. The problem in the first paragraph of the morphology section doesn't have a logical contradiction; just vague comparisons and inconsistent language, with no set reference point. To wit:

"modern timber wolf" (8% smaller) vs. "the gray wolf" (equal size, heavier build). Problem: The timber wolf can be any of several subspecies of the the gray wolf, but it is the gray wolf. The juxtaposition of "timber wolf" (which one?) with "gray wolf" (all timber wolves are gray wolves) suggests a distinction between the two.

but it is the gray wolf. No, there are gray wolves that are not timber wolves, and when the article uses the term “gray wolf” in juxtaposition to timber wolf, it means those that are not Canadian timber wolves. In other contexts, it uses “gray wolf” inclusive of timber wolves. This is all deducible by context, but in the end it’s pointless. The article gets into specifics (like 8% blah blah) but that’s just one paper’s results, and there isn’t actually any scholarly consensus on the matter. And yes, the term “size” is too vague in the article. Strebe (talk) 07:01, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

The last sentence of the second paragraph is a true contradiction to the above. If average dire wolves were similar to larger gray wolves, and larger dire wolves were larger than any gray wolf, doesn't that imply that generally speaking they're larger? And if so, how can it be said they were "roughly equal in size" to gray wolves? Perhaps what is meant is that they weighed more, but wording is specifically about size now.

how can it be said they were "roughly equal in size" to gray wolves? Because roughly means roughly. Even if they’re larger on average than gray wolves that are not timber wolves, and smaller on average than (Candadian) timber wolves, they’re roughly the same size (with size meaning length and height, not weight). Strebe (talk) 07:01, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

The last paragraph in morphology talks about "the difference in body size between the eastern and western dire wolves" as though that's been established, but it hasn't as far as I can tell. There was technical wording above about "Pleistocene eastern-Beringian" wolves and "Late Pleistocene wolves found in Eurasia," but I have no clue as to whether those mean eastern and western dire wolves or not. The language has changed and it's indecipherable to me. Would really like to see a clear-writing expert come in.

5B EXT2013’s edits are a mess. The elucidations on body size were already a mess. Now much more is a mess. Strebe (talk) 07:01, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Strebe, you seem to understand this subject very well, could you clean it up? The world of casual dire wolf–researchers awaits a hero. A hero named Strebe. The need is dire. Woof!  :-) Frimmin (talk) 01:39, 28 October 2013 (UTC)Frimmin

However, I do understand several punctuation and grammatical errors in the section, which I will correct forthwith. Frimmin (talk) 06:10, 26 October 2013 (UTC)Frimmin

Direwolf redirect

My popular culture section was (quite rightly) reverted; Game of Thrones direwolves are not dire wolves, despite the similarity of name. However, all of the "direwolf" links on Wikipedia (e.g. World_of_A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire#Winterfell) are redirecting to this article, which is inappropriate since it makes no mention of the fictional direwolf. Can someone stop the redirect, please? Frimmin (talk) 06:09, 26 October 2013 (UTC)Frimmin

It’s reasonable and appropriate for the various fantasy dire wolf incarnations to link to this article. The converse is not reasonable. It’s reasonable to redirect here so that people have some notion of why the fictional versions exist. It’s not reasonable to link in reverse for all the reasons given here. Strebe (talk) 06:31, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
I wasn't talking about reverse linking. And I can see your point, that readers of the fantasy pages are getting the real-world inspiration of the fantasy animal when they come here. If we had an in popular culture section, the links from the fantasy direwolf would be still more relevant. I wrote such a section which was quickly reverted. I think the optimal solution would be for a separate article on the fantasy direwolves, and a disambiguation page. I'm not competent to create either of those. Without those, would someone restore my popular culture section or write a better one? And would it last more than a day?
Could you specify which redirects you're referring to? The example you gave doesn't seem to have a redirect. It just has a link straight to the Dire wolf article. -- Fyrael (talk) 07:25, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Fryael, click on the link and look at the redirect notice that appears under the title of this article. Frimmin (talk) 01:20, 28 October 2013 (UTC)Frimmin
Make a Dire wolf (fantasy) article or something like that, if they're so prevalent in that. FunkMonk (talk) 13:00, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Good idea, with a note distinguishing direwolf from dire wolf. But I don't understand the direwolf well enough to do it, other than create a stub.
Be bold! Create the stub! Given how often mentions of fantasy dire wolves slip into this article, the fantasy article is badly needed. Others will help flesh it out. Strebe (talk) 07:30, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Copyvio

I am in the process of deleting copyright violations. Someone just copied and pasted entire paragraphs into the article. The source is Anyonge, William (02). "New body mass estimates for Canis dirus, the extinct Pleistocene dire wolf". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 26:1: 209–212. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help), an interesting article; a link to the online PDF is here. I hope someone will put this to good use. Drmies (talk) 19:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Could it possibly have evolved in South America?

At the moment, Dire_wolf#Evolution is inconsistent whether the dire wolf has certainly evolved in North America, or it's still possible that it has done so in South America. From my point of view, the evidence mentioned there is conclusive. The only criterion mentioned for South America is:

However, the dire wolf origin can also possibly be traced to South America as it has a more recent common ancestry with the South American wolves C. gezi and C. nehringi.

The source isn't any more available under the link given, and this is not an argument at all. The gray wolf and the coyote are mutually closest living relatives, notwithstanding that the former evolved in Eurasia, the other in North America. If C.dirus and C. gezi/nehringi were closely related, it seems that a common ancestor migrated to South America, and after differentiating, so did the dire wolf once more. If there is no other reasoning for South America, I think that this hypothesis can be removed without any worries. --KnightMove (talk) 17:24, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

The death of the link isn’t death of the research. I found the paper elsewhere. It doesn’t seem to say at all what this article’s text says. I’m deleting that passage. Strebe (talk) 23:36, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

A Song of Ice and Fire (again)

Given the above discussions about the ASOIAF/GoT references and the fact that they are not welcome on this article, I would like to mention the existence of a project aiming at breeding a race of dogs resembling to the canis dirus by breeding grey wolves with taller dogs. I read about this in an article about GoT so I guess the two are related, and that would make the GoT reference more notable in the "real world". I will try and find the article, but if someone has heard of it, maybe you could add it yourself. Xerxes (contact) 00:10, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Actually, such references would be welcomed in this article if they could answer these questions three, in that
  1. "Is the dire wolf of the Game of Thrones franchise in fact Canis dirus or merely very large magical gray wolves?"
  2. "Are there reliable secondary sources that discuss how the Game of Thrones dire wolf influences and or impacts the public's perception of Canis dirus?"
  3. "If there is an imperative to discuss Game of Thrones dire wolves in detailed length here, then how come there does not appear to be much of an imperative to discuss Game of Thrones dire wolves in detailed length in any of the Game of Thrones pages?"
So...--Mr Fink (talk) 01:19, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
I believe this was the article that I read. "Northern Inuit Dogs — HBO’s choice for dire-wolf stand-ins — more closely resemble the modern gray wolf, Canis lupus"(they later used real gray wolves with CGI) "Schwarz herself admits that the reconstruction on which she’s basing the breed’s coat and stature are more wishful and fantasy-oriented than scientific, matched more to the needs of prospective owners than prehistoric fact."
Looks like it's a no then... As for ASOIAF, first tome : "It's no freak," Jon said calmly. "That's a direwolf. They grow larger that the other kind." Theon Greyjoy said, "There's not been a direwolf sighted south of the Wall in two hundred years." "I see one now," Jon replied.
I guess that makes #1 a no, especially since it's spelled direwolf in the book, and it is described as a not-so-extinct species (if we think of Westeros as an alternative middle-ages). For #2 I could assure you that most people that casually speak of direwolves on social media and in real life nowadays do so since GoT. But I have no secondary source for this, so it's also a no. As for #3, I am not aware of the state of developpement of GoT related articles but direwolves have their own aricle at GoT Wikia. The direwolf is the sigil of the most followed House in the books and the series, and main characters have/had direwolves as pets throughout the story, with some subplots related to them. Their notability by themselves is difficult to establish for an encyclopaedia like Wikipadia, but maybe an article about direwolves in fantasy could be an option. Xerxes (contact) 18:31, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
Unfortunately, because anyone can edit them and because they are continually changing, other wikias are not considered reliable references, though, some the references used there may be of use here if they are determined to be trustworthy.--Mr Fink (talk) 20:17, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
Interesting censorship being played in this article. "...Is the dire wolf of the Game of Thrones franchise in fact Canis dirus?..." This article is not titled Canis dirus, its titled Dire wolf. Does the Gray wolf page include an "in culture" section - yes. Dog page includes an "in culture section" - yes. Dire wolf page includes an "in culture" section - no! No other canid has the public exposure of this one at this presnt time, and only for this present time, yet an opportunity is allowed to slide. Do you really think that the nearly 1,000 visits per day to this page were from people that have a passion for extinct canini dredged up from tar pits in California? I do not expect this article to become Game-Of-Thrones Central and that should be enforced brutally, but I do expect some form of restrained recognition, and I also expect the page to transform into something educational that those one-off visitors can take away with them, having not found the Direwolf of their fantasy. Currently it is a random collection of bits and pieces contributed across time from various editors - at least one of them mis-citing the material as my recent edit has shown, and I believe there are more - with no integrated, coherent story. As for User:Strebe's recent UNDO based on a cryptic edit summary of WP:POPCULTURE, you now have the opportunity to highlight to us the line and letter of that policy you thought the other editor was not complying with. William Harris • talk • 04:05, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia’s policies on this are clear. There isn’t anything special about the advice given in WP:POPCULTURE other than that it’s a convenient way to understand how WP:NOTABLE, WP:RELIABLE, WP:TRIVIA, WP:OR, WP:SYNTH work together or in opposition in the context of the incessant attempts to stuff trivia into Wikipedia articles. It’s not that mention of the fantasy dire wolf doesn’t belong; it’s not that “In Culture” sections don’t belong—read WP:POPCULTURE!—rather, it’s that if it goes in, it needs to be properly sourced so that the context and importance are clear and the information is reliable. Otherwise it really is just trivia. And in any case, the best solution (since you yourself, User talk:William Harris, seem to think the dire wolf “most” people are looking for is a different thing that what this article is about) would be to write a separate article (properly sourced, of course) and set up a disambiguation page. As for no coherent, integrated story, welcome to Wikipedia. That’s the one problem all the Wikipedia policies cannot solve. Strebe (talk) 04:43, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
As for ways these edits mentioning fantasy dire wolves run afoul of WP:POPCULTURE:
  • If a cultural reference is genuinely significant it should be possible to find a reliable secondary source that supports that judgment. Quoting a respected expert attesting to the importance of a subject as a cultural influence is encouraged. No such source was provided.
  • In determining whether a reference is encyclopedic, one helpful test can be to look at whether a person who is familiar with the topic only through the reference in question has the potential to learn something meaningful about the topic from that work alone. I’m not familiar with the work mentioned. I learned nothing meaningful.
  • Inclusion of more and more pop-culture details the more influential or general the topic is – A litany of innumerable novels, TV shows, and films featuring Julius Caesar, dogs, New Hampshire, World War II, wizards, or hip hop is not useful to anyone. Topics of this level of world importance or broad generality never need pop-culture bulleted lists. Lists with bullets tend to grow exponentially, to the point that they become an indiscriminate collection of trivia. If a cultural references section is present in a article on WW II, for example, it should be reserved for major, in-depth treatments of the subject that have had lasting significance. As well, it should be written in prose, in paragraph form. This "raises the bar" for contributing to the section, and makes editors less likely to add trivia.
  • When trying to decide if a pop culture reference is appropriate to an article, ask yourself the following:
2. Have multiple reliable sources pointed out the reference? Not in any way provided.
3. Did any real-world event occur because of the cultural element covered by the reference? Not in any way demonstrated.
4. Did the referencing material significantly depend on the specific subject? For example, if the reference is to a specific model of car, did the material use that model car for some reason, or was it just a case of "use a well-known name of a car"? No, probably not; as User talk:William Harris notes, it’s not the same creature as this article describes.
The entries by Hk-reader were purely trivia, devoid of references, context, any way for the reader to assess significance or reliability. Dozens of fantasy books could just as easily end up in such a list. Those edits failed all tests for WP:NOTABILITY and WP:RELIABLE. Strebe (talk) 05:16, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
You did not delete just the GOT reference, which I am happy to discuss further. You also deleted the Grateful Dead reference that was fully cited. And if you had followed the citation - which you obviously did not bother to do - you will have found a couple of secondary sources discussing the track. Regarding your appeal to WP:NOTABILITY, within that policy you have ignored "Notability guidelines do not apply to content within an article" WP:NNC, and regarding WP:RELIABLE, feel free to outline how either of these 2 websites were not so. Regarding your "Welcome to Wikipedia", I am not referring to Wikipedia, I am referring to the Dire wolf article specifically - that is something that we can improve on if we try. We only need to look after our little part of the world, not the entire world. William Harris • talk • 09:48, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
William Harris, please do not confuse "censorship" with "quality control." As was discussed at length by Strebe, the previous "In Popular Culture" section(s) for Dire wolf have been either inane, reference-free laundry lists of barely notable trivial appearances, or poorly written fan-cruft for Game of Thrones. If you have a proposal for an "In Popular Culture" for dire wolves, please discuss what you have in mind.--Mr Fink (talk) 05:28, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
This is real easy Mr Fink - what would the reasonable person think? What would an independent third party think (oh wait, that would be me!) A review of who has contributed to this article over the past 12 months would show that one of us actually provides value-adding fully-cited content, and others simply dot-the-Is and cross-the-Ts or undo others attempts at adding content, for the minimum of reasons, and I am finally no longer going to stand for it.

Now we have 2 options - we can continue to argue and storm off in our own directions in silence and proceed to make lives difficult for each other with nothing achieved (as the apes do), or we can act like wolf-kind and work together in a pack. I propose that 3 issues need to be resolved:

  1. Should there be a "In popular culture" section? - I propose that there should. Other wolf-kind articles have them, and it is an opportunity to promote some information about Canis dirus - while it is still in the public mind. All things fade given time. It should be preceded by a <--Note: This section is not for the promotion of ATOFAI and any further reference to it will be removed-->
  2. If so, what form should it take? I propose that there be some general material on popular culture, perhaps stuff like the Grateful Dead track (I am no fan by the way, I am a neutral party) but it can be further developed from what was proposed recently. There should be under that topic a sub-heading actually called "Direwolf" and spelt that way, because the bots will pick it up across the internet and any search engine will find it very easily and bring people to the Dire wolf article. Under that heading we have a very short paragraph acknowledging A Song of Ice and Fire and underline that the direwolf used in that production was a Northern Inuit Dog with trick photography to make it appear larger than it is. Now for the key - we include a table that compares the dog/gray wolf/dire wolf against height, length, weight, bite power, and bite-power per kilogram (we can get that data) and any other variable you think relevant. People who have an interest in looking for the Direwolf will be brought to this article and will leave with an understanding of some basics. They might even be encouraged to read the whole article. Some may even contribute to the article - how do you think I ended up here?
  3. What should be the structure and content of the Dire wolf article? We can discuss that later, but I think this article is due for an audit, review and renewal. William Harris • talk • 09:48, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Note that other animal articles that have been promoted only have culture sections when they have significant, historical importance to human culture. I certainly wouldn't say the same for sporadic appearances of big dogs in a TV series which share nothing with this animal but a name. It is a mere reference to this subject, therefore tivia, which is discouraged on Wikipedia. FunkMonk (talk) 11:57, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Hello Funkmonk, we meet once again on the Pleistocene-related pages. I am cognizant of your point of view but you are either missing mine or I am not making myself clear. Allow me to try again; my issues are:
  1. Although I - and no doubt many others - appreciate the fine work done by the two editors mentioned above in keeping the flotsam and jetsam of the the internet off the Dire Wolf page as can be seen on the View History page, recently a contributing editor’s work was undone with a cryptic (i.e. no explanation) reference to WP:POPCULTURE. When I asked the undoing editor as to why, I was given the fine print answer of WP:POPCULTURE but unfortunately not the large print answer that I had expected that editor to recognize, which states: “This unofficial guidance essay contains comments and advice of one or more Wikipedia contributors. It is not a Wikipedia policy or guideline, though it may be consulted for assistance.” The bolding is Wikipedia’s and not mine. WP:ESSAYS states that “Essays have no official status, and do not speak for the Wikipedia community as they may be created without approval. Following the instructions or advice given in an essay is optional." The document is non-binding. Therefore, a contributing editor’s work was undone based on a non-binding document, which brought my comments to this Talk Page and was my main concern. This must not be allowed to be repeated, nor an undo with the cryptic edit summary of "Trivia", nor veiled references to other WPs without some more specific explanation in the undoing edit summary.
  2. A search of page size on Wikipedia will show: the Dire wolf page 30k and in comparison A Tale of Fire and Ice 142k, Game of Thrones (TV series) 125k, and 7 Game of Thrones series books of 20k each. I would suggest that is evidence of the cultural significance. People wanting to post GOT stuff on this page are not going to stop trying under the present arrangement, and I would suggest that because the other GOT-related pages appear to be reasonably well-written, not to mention well-patrolled, that the Dire wolf page has become the last resort of people wanting to post their views on direwolves. Now for the hard truth – neither you, nor Strebe, nor Mr Fink, nor I (please note that I don’t want trivia posted on the Dire wolf page either) can stop people posting what we think is trivia. There is no Wikipedia policy that I am aware of that specifically forbids it. Neither WP:POPCULT (note the different name) nor MOS:TRIVIA will help – they only advise how to manage it when it comes. If anybody is aware of something specific then please let me know, but please don't bother directing me to essays that are non-binding. One day, somebody will come here with knowledge of the rules and they will be unstoppable. They may point to WP:CENSORED and claim someone finds their edit "objectionable" under that policy, which is possibly but unlikely to succeed, but they certainly can point to WP:GAMING of the system, whether it was intentionally done or not. Despite objections from the stewards of this page, if someone throws enough mud then it starts to stick. This will not resolve well.
So, we have two major choices. (1) Embrace the tide to a limited but controlled degree as I have proposed (but which no other editor appears to want to endorse, so I must defer to the majority viewpoint), or (2) we place a WP:HATNOTE at the top of the page stating that “This article is about Canis dirus. For direwolf see [Game of Thrones#In the Seven Kingdoms|Game of Thrones]”, plus possibly a disimbag page as suggested above. It might also be wise for us to have a heading on this Talk page as a consensus among the 4 of us along the lines that the article will not host information on the direwolf of GOT, and if any undo is necessary it can make reference to that - that is something that we can do, and IS enforceable, and IS within the rules. Regards, William Harris • talk • 09:19, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
I'd go wit two. And just to elaborate, we who have many palaeontology articles on our watchlists are very used to random trivia being added to such, the dire wolf article is in no way exceptional. Liopleurodon routinely gets stuff added and removed about some meaningless cameo in a web-animation (see all the talk page sections about "Charlie the Magic Unicorn"), and an extremely obscure extinct bird such as the Réunion swamphen was referred to briefly in a popular podcast, and subsequently flooded with edits about this. Should we cave in to these just because it is a recurring trend? But moving on, how would Strebe and others suggest adding anything meaningful about Game of Thrones here? A whole section for a single paragraph? How would it be worded? Seems excessive to me, and how will it succeed in not violating WP:Trivia? FunkMonk (talk) 09:34, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
With that in mind, have a very close look at WP:Trivia - a very close look. To my reading, there is very little there to "violate". However, we need WP:CONACHIEVE. Regards, William Harris • talk • 10:53, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
My close look gave me this, hence my last comment: "Short cultural references sections should usually be entirely reworked into the main flow the article." So I ask again, how and where would you include such information, if not in a "short cultural reference section" consisting of a single paragraph? And more to the point, why is it necessary? Not trying to be confrontational here, it just seems like a slippery slope. FunkMonk (talk) 11:28, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
My reading is that "should usually be" is not "must", and it opens the matter up for exceptions. There is nothing concrete here, in my opinion, that could be depended on in the event of challenge. Is it necessary? This is the English-speaking version of Wikipedia, and based in the page size figures I have quoted above, are the stewards of this page really proposing that they could not find a popular culture reference for the dire wolf in English-speaking popular culture? Regards, William Harris • talk • 09:01, 2 February 2016 (UTC)


First, User:William Harris, thank you for your many contributions to this article and your interest in the topic of fantastical dire wolves or direwolves or direwolfs or whatever orthography is preferred. I’m going to rant for a bit. Then I’ll proceed with “constructive” comments.

<rant>

If you wish to inspire cooperation:
  • You might consider acknowledging not only the sorts of edits you evidently disapprove of, but also those that are incontrovertible improvements, and in any case, recognize the sincerity of those donating their efforts. I’ve been tending this article for four years now, and some of those edits consumed actual time digging through actual research that was not actually casually available to me. It is not endearing to have it all mocked as censorship and nits. I realize you only bothered to check the past year, and yes, I’ve been pretty wretchedly busy tending 200 articles to keep them from regressing into gray goo, and yes, perhaps it is time to just let most of them go… if I could convince myself that doing so would improve them. I’m not to that point yet.
  • You might consider that I acknowledged that WP:POPCULTURE is just a summary of other policies already in place. You asked what about WP:POPCULTURE the recent edits violated. I explained those, and then you promptly ignored that explanation and began declaring that WP:POPCULTURE is non-binding instead—which I had already stated myself; it’s the underlying policies that are binding. This makes me cranky. Sorry I was sloppy in my use of WP:NOTABLE; I do not consider the fantasy dire wolf topic (or any other) WP:NOTABLE until reliable sources are brought to bear.
  • You called me to task for deleting Hk-reader, essentially claiming that they were reasonable edits because thousands of people visit the page every day looking apparently not for information about fossils but instead about the Song of Fire and Ice bestiary. As several other editors have pointed out, without context and reliable citations, those sorts of edits are just trivia. Yes, likely •someone• could have cleaned up those edits; somewhere out there, there must be reliable sources for the SFI edits along with how they’re culturally significant, but •I• am not that person because I don’t care about that topic, which is not the topic of this article. If the edits were germane to actual dire wolves, and seemed credible, I would have done some legwork to cite them. I think rather dimly of editors who delete credible, easily verifiable content just because it’s not cited—but I don’t include trivia that thinking. I don’t necessarily mind if you disagree, but it gets pretty tiresome dealing with constant trivia insertions (in many articles), and in most cases, like this one, I’m not the one qualified to have an opinion on how the trivia can be turned into something useful. Without reliable citations, anything can be removed, particularly if it is arguably trivia and arguably off topic. Hence imperious pronouncements like, “This must not be allowed to be repeated, nor an undo with the cryptic edit summary of ‘Trivia’, nor veiled references to other WPs without some more specific explanation in the undoing edit summary,” are simply alienating. I agree I should have done something useful with the Grateful Dead material. As presented, it was trivia. I did glance at the linked site, but thought it was a fan site. Now that I look at it more, it’s not. I could have moved material from that into the original edit to make it encyclopædic. That I didn’t, I agree was a failure.
  • Rather than going off on people trying to keep the article afloat, you could have salvaged some of the edits yourself if you thought there was something in them worth saving. Presumably you have the skill to. Instead we have rancor and drama.

</rant>

I don’t think your interpretation here is tenable: Now for the hard truth – neither you, nor Strebe, nor Mr Fink, nor I (please note that I don’t want trivia posted on the Dirde wolf page either) can stop people posting what we think is trivia. What most Wikipedia editors use “trivia” for is factoids of passing popular interest that go uncited or whose citations are WP:PUS. The “passing popular interest” isn’t the relevant disqualifier; that just happens to be a category of edits that show up poorly cited with high frequency and often run afoul of various combinations of WP:OR, WP:SYNTH, WP:NOT#FANSITE, WP:NOTEVERYTHING, WP:INDISCRIMINATE.
As for what to do, I don’t know why you haven’t inserted a hat-note already if you’re worried about the lost traffic; I can’t imagine why anyone would find that controversial. My own preference would be for a separate article on the dire wolf in fantasy to be created by someone who cares about it and can bring to bear reliable sources. The creature shows up in far more than GOT. Such an article ought to make everyone happy.
It wouldn’t bother me particularly if the In popular culture section were reworked as you described, showing how the GOT direwolves compare to historical dire wolves, and so forth, but if that were data put together by the editor, as WP:SYNTH, someone else would just delete it if it bothered them. Strebe (talk) 07:27, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Hello Strebe, thank-you for your forthright comments, and we now see each others' points of view. I have not put in place a hatnote yet because this matter is under discussion and to me it requires WP:CONACHIEVE before any further action should be taken. If a controlled popular culture section was supported here then the hatnote proposed would be defeating that purpose, would it not? I think your creation of the section in the article is premature as it has not been agreed yet, and I would now like to hear from Mr Fink. Regards, William Harris • talk • 09:01, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
WP:BEBOLD! Strebe (talk) 15:27, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
If worse comes to worst, why not start a separate "Dire wolf in popular culture" article?--Mr Fink (talk) 16:34, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Also note that the FA article about Smilodon, probably the most popular of all ice age predators, with countless media appearances, barely even mentions its popularity. It gets a single line, which almost didn't make the cut: "One of the most famous of prehistoric mammals, Smilodon has often been featured in popular media and is the state fossil of California." I'm sorry, but in comparison, a vague reference in a single series doesn't come close at all. So I see no compelling reason why we should go to extra lengths to include such info here. FunkMonk (talk) 23:52, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
WP:BEBOLD indeed Strebe. Now that you have led the way with (perhaps a little too early) action, I will match it with the hatnote is promised, now executed. We appear as a group to be a bit negative on my direwolf proposal, so I am withdrawing it. I have no intention of starting a Song of Ice and Fire related-stub, that is best left to others. (Some time ago somebody I knew said they had read about a "direwolf" in a novel and asked me if I knew what it was - an internet search brought me here. If you assumed that I was a fan then you have been mistaken.) Regarding the new popculture section, I will leave it to your discretion as what to do with it, but I recommend strongly that you will need a policy other than WP:POPCULTURE to Undo it - please refer to my post to Funkmonk above before the break in the text. That is my opinion; you risk one day someone pushing it. I will now create under a new section the tool that would be effective - our written consensus. In the event of another direwolf "attack", we need only refer to Talk:Dire wolf#direwolf in the UNDO Edit Summary and all is covered. Please feel free to edit it until it reflects what we agree. Then please add your signatures to make it viable. I regard this issue as now resolved. Regards, William Harris • talk • 10:21, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
If the Dire wolf page still suffers from frequent dire-assault after all of our deliberations here (plus the preceding years above) then I will create a direwolf stub that simply says what one is and to go see the Game of Thrones pages!!! Problem solved for us, not so the GOT page patrollers. Regards, William Harris • talk • 12:13, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Now that we are all accounted for, I will wait a couple more days to see if any other editors wish to add a vote, then formally close off the direwolf section and leave you with bigger teeth. Regards, William Harris • talk • 20:09, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Archive 1Archive 2

Any artistic depction of size compared with today's dogs?

I think it'd be very illustrative. 69.22.242.15 (talk) 19:02, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

The Description section already contains an image of a dire wolf skeleton next to a gray wolf skeleton. As far as I know, the gray wolf is the direct ancestor of modern dogs. I'm not sure what more you could ask for. -- Fyrael (talk) 19:18, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
When you say "today's dogs", are we talking about a 3kg Chihuahua or a 120kg English mastiff? William Harris • talk • 20:28, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Range

I came across this, should someone find it useful- File:Canis dirus range.png Regards, William Harris • talk • 09:33, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

PS: This also looks a bit "bitey"- File:Canisdirusskull.jpg William Harris • talk • 09:36, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
The range is original research by the uploader, so is not usable. FunkMonk (talk) 21:05, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

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Broken citation

Can someone please repair the broken Leonard 2007 reference please. AshLin (talk) 12:08, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, now fixed. William Harris • talk • 21:10, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Dire wolf

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Dire wolf's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "leonard2007":

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 16:23, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Leonard references now fixed, including standardisation with Subspecies of Canis lupus. (My thanks to our friendly ap, AnomieBOT) William Harris • talk • 10:26, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Structure of the Dire wolf article

Hello, friends of the dire wolf. I have an interest in Late Pleistocene wolves. So, over the past year I have gathered together 22 main dirus research articles and many of their supporting works with the intention of significantly correcting and updating the article, which I have just completed. The article is now 55 kilobytes in size, has 153 watchers of whom 28 have viewed my most recent edits, and averages 3,500 visitors each day with some peaks of 9,000 each day. I would like to hear your ideas and thoughts on how to structure this information. Some issues are:

  • I know that there are some who prefer not to see lupus mentioned so often in the article, however lupus is the closest representative of dirus today and if we are to make comparisons then lupus is the logical one, especially when their craniodental morphologies are very close (Nowak 1979, Goulet 1993, Anyonge 2006, O'keefe 2014 with Goulet proposing lupus as the ancestor)
  • I am not opposed to splitting apart some of the current paragraphs if sentences should belong somewhere else, as long as the supporting citation goes with them
  • there appears to be an older (120k - 70k YBP) eastern Canis dirus dirus that we find no evidence of any later, and the more recent (40k-13k YBP) western Canis dirus guildayi that we know much about from the La Brea tarpits, with some proposing that one evolved from the other
  • the La Brea area appears to have been a refugium as the ice age peaked, so in what section of the article do we write something about the La Brea tarpits as it is a major contributor to our knowledge of dirus
  • the sections on "Taxonomy", "Habitat and distribution", "Competitors" and "Extinction" are (nearly) all stand-alone sections. What we know of Canis dirus dirus could almost be its own small section. However, what we know about guildayi is a flow of information about proposed climate fluctuations that may have impacted on its size, skull morphology, dentition, tooth-breakage and behavior i.e. the major part of the article. How might we best structure that?

One approach might be that after "Evolution" we have a new chapter called "Eastern direwolf" and include all we know about C.l. dirus (the big one, which is not a lot), followed by another chapter called "Western direwolf" and include all we know about C.l. guildayi (the smaller one, which is quite a lot).

I would like to hear as many ideas as possible. My personal philosophy is that there are no foolish ideas but there are missed opportunities if we do not receive a wide-variety of them. Regards, William Harris • talk • 21:25, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

On handling different subspecies, you can see what we did with the species over at Smilodon, a featured article. I don't see any problem with distributing info about both subspecies to relevant sections (as we did on Smilodon, where one species is considerably less known than the others) rather than somehow separating them. Also, if these subspecies are widely regarded as valid, they should be listed in the taxobox (see for example impala for how to do this). As for La Brea, see Smilodon as well, and Columbian mammoth (also featured), where it is handled under the behaviour/paleobiology sections. As for mentioning lupus much, if that's what the sources do, that's what you should do. FunkMonk (talk) 12:18, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Funkmonk, that is good advice. There appears to be no other input, however there are a number of watchers who have been here recently. Of interest, when we had our last discussion last February (to be known as the "direwolf incident" - now in archive), I mentioned that the article received 1,000 visitors per day. It now receives 3,500 visits per day on average and peaks at 9,000 visits on some days. I trust that the visitors find it informative. Regards, William Harris • talk • 10:31, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
I think the popularity may be Game of Thrones related... So most watchers may not necessarily know much about the actual species. FunkMonk (talk) 12:02, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
Possibly, that was my position back in February. I put a "direwolf" redirect to a GOT chapter at that time. William Harris • talk • 21:03, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
There are arguments for and against putting Evolution under Taxonomy (and you and I have had that argument in the past!), however I shall go with your advice as per "the cat". I have also removed the North American and South American subtitles as I do not think they add value nor any better navigation - let me know if you disagree. I thought about removing the entire paragraph "Some researchers have proposed..." but should I do, then I know that at some time in the future someone will simply raise the controversy again with an old citation. Perhaps we leave it in to mitigate that risk. William Harris • talk • 22:20, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
I think your choices make sense. As for removing the paragraph about South American origin, our articles should not only contain current thinking about a subject, but also present past views, while of course explaining if they are not considered plausible today. FunkMonk (talk) 11:57, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

So it seems there's now a popular culture section. The previous argument about having info about the GOT "direwolf" was mainly about whether we should have a popular culture/trivia section or not, not specifically about the inclusion of "direwolf" related stuff in itself. If we're to have a popular culture section anyway, which I generally oppose, there is no real purpose in keeping out the "direwolf" related stuff. Since William Harris has done a good job of expanding the rest of the article as well (I think those who improve an article should have the final say about it), I won't object formally to the popular culture section, but I'd like to add that if that section is there, you might as well throw in a reference to GOT for good measure. For me, the purpose of keeping out GOT related stuff is defeated when the pop section is there anyway. FunkMonk (talk) 14:28, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

If whoever resurrects the "In Popular Culture" section can't be bothered to explain or source why their trivia list items are relevant to how "Popular Culture" views Canis dirus, I say just delete it again as necessary.--Mr Fink (talk) 17:06, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
You might recall that it was created while we were negotiating the agreement, with another party creating it with "Be bold" somewhat early. You might reacquaint yourselves by reading the last 3 entries at the end of the Archive 1 file. As I said then, I will leave it up to your discretion as to whether it stays or not, but it was not part of our accord. William Harris • talk • 20:17, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Talking about sections, it seems the tooth breakage section has more to do with behaviour than with anatomy (and therefore belongs down there)? FunkMonk (talk) 15:52, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Hello FunkMonk, something I keep in the back of my mind as I progress. I am systematically working through over a dozen research papers relating to dirus in date order, and updating the article as I go. (The task is too large and the change too great for just one huge update from my sandbox, and it gives other editors the opportunity to comment/protest.) Therefore, the section names and what goes where are still evolving. When I have finished we will chat again about structure - my focus at present is to deposit relevant, cited material and the removal of that which is not, including material which has been "cited" but has not been taken from the research paper it claims to cite. Material posted from suspect websites has a very limited lifetime here now. Regards, William Harris • talk • 20:52, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
No problem, the most important thing is of course that information is being added, and good job at that! FunkMonk (talk) 20:55, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I will give a "howl" on this talk page to bring the "Dire wolf pack" together for a discussion once I get to 2016. I have been planning this update for over a year now, and am finally executing it. Regards, William Harris • talk • 21:01, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Could be a contender for good article, and perhaps featured article after that, if you want to try that... FunkMonk (talk) 21:02, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I am not concerned. For me, the validity and information value of the content is key. However, we might give it a try - thanks for your support. Regards, William Harris • talk • 21:04, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I was thinking of doing it myself at some point, but didn't have a good overview of the literature. But I can give advice here if you get interested, I have a some experience with getting Ice Age animals promoted by now. FunkMonk (talk) 21:08, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Hello Funkmonk, I find it interesting that they have used numbers in their article that were only supplied recently as an update to our Dire wolf article. It would appear that theirs is based heavily on ours. I have some bad news for them, the only big wolves north of The Wall (the glaciers) were Beringians, with the direwolves all southerners - they preferred it warmer! Regards, William Harris • talk • 09:32, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Dire wolf - lead paragraph(s)

Hello, friends of the dire wolf. I have an interest in the Late Pleistocene wolves. So, over the past year I have gathered together 22 main dirus research articles and many of their supporting works with the intention of significantly correcting and updating the article, which I have just completed. The article has now been restructured similar to the dire wolf's old competitor, "the cat" (Smilodon, of the sabre-tooth variety!). We now need to craft an opening paragraph or two for the start of the article. Does anybody have any preference for what that might look like or what its main focal points should be, please? William Harris • talk • 11:45, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, to put it simply, it should be a summary of the entire article, and should not contain unique information not found in the article body. The length of the intro is determined by the length of the article, so I think it could be at least three paragraphs here. And last, the intro does not need references, as the statements there are supposed to be sourced after their equivalents in the article body. FunkMonk (talk) 11:54, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. (Do you ever sleep, you appear to be some form of omnipotent power that resides on a server somewhere........) William Harris • talk • 12:31, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
Hehe, I'm in Scandinavia, so we're probably in quite different time zones (not that I don't stay up late when I get the chance)... FunkMonk (talk) 13:20, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
Given that I am in South Australia, it is a mystery how our paths cross at the same times :-) (I will certainly refer to MOS:LEAD and "the cat" for guidance.) William Harris • talk • 21:02, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
And so it ends. I could not resist placing a link to an old foe in the second sentence - somehow it felt right, and eerily that "they both would have wanted that". Please have a read, if there is anything that needs further work or elaboration please give me a call. I expect that Strebe will, at some time in the future, fix my incorrect spelling and split infinitives.......... Regards, William Harris • talk • 22:56, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
I think it looks quite good. Just too bad we don't have better quality photos... FunkMonk (talk) 11:36, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
A whole-genome sequence would be even better! William Harris • talk • 12:19, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
On that note, a code cladogram with links might be nice. Seems the current cladogram image has been lifted straight from a non-free article and given a false license... FunkMonk (talk) 12:46, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
Done. Did you want to follow up and tag it for deletion? William Harris • talk • 10:15, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Yep:[2] FunkMonk (talk) 13:27, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
The article looks quite solid now, I think, if you want to take it further, I think that for at least FAC, you might have to standardise the citations more, so that for example all years are in parenthesis, all first names are either initials or spelled out, etc. Also, a bit puzzling that there is little description of its body apart of the skull? Is this because the body is similar to that of other canids? If not, any unique features should be mentioned. FunkMonk (talk) 21:58, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
As with most fossils, the skull usually remains long after other bones have dissolved away - the skull is more commonly found. I intend to take a break from the Dire wolf for a while, I am a little worn from it and other editors with a watch on it are probably tiring of my daily edits as well. There is a seminal paper about to be released in the next day or so on the origin and domestication of the dog, which is my main interest here on Wikipedia and will then consume my time. Thanks for your advice and guidance over the last month. Regards, William Harris • talk • 11:26, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
Good luck! And there are of course plenty of other fossil canids to work on... FunkMonk (talk) 17:16, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
A personal musing. If you read the short section at Subspecies of Canis lupus#Wolf population differences (more of my stuff!), there is a growing body of recent research that supports the absolutely amazing degree of lupus cranio-dental plasticity as it adapts to different ecological environments. From our article, it would appear that there is little difference between dirus and a large lupus apart from 4 out of 15 cranio-dental aspects. I would not be surprised if one day a DNA analysis shows Pleistocene lupus - of some form or another - as the ancestor of dirus. I found the suspected Beringian wolf (DNA analysis yet to confirm) remains recently found in Wyoming, and described by the researchers as being between a grey wolf and a dire wolf, very interesting. Regards, William Harris • talk • 09:55, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
Interesting, if the recent mammoth results are anything to go by, everything we know about Ice Age mammal interrelationships based solely on morphologly is wrong... I guess we would get Canis lupus dirus then? FunkMonk (talk) 12:42, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
Unless there has been enough change to warrant the recognition of a speciation event. That would be up to the morphologists and geneticists to argue over - the ongoing contention we have in species recognition by phenotype vs genotype. William Harris • talk • 22:00, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
More drama in this regard, FunkMonk. All hell has broken loose on the Red wolf, Eastern wolf and Coyote pages - a whole-genome study indicates that the Red wolf and Eastern wolf are gray wolf/coyote hybrids (as we thought) but also the the extant wolf and the extant coyote diverged only 52,000 years ago (between 6-117,000 YBP)!! DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501714 Regards,   William Harris |talk  11:24, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
Ouch! I guess having separate pages for all is still valid, as they seem to form differentiated populations? FunkMonk (talk) 19:14, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
Yes, and although changes have been initiated on those pages by some editors, I think that it is still early days yet. I would have stated "In 2016, one study indicated..." rather than state it as a widely accepted fact. Next, we will either see either its support or reasons for its refutation. Regards,   William Harris |talk  20:52, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
Yep. Any edit-wars yet? FunkMonk (talk) 22:23, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
There was shock and dismay on the red and eastern wolf pages - no separate species, but hybrids. There was some initial dog-fighting on the Coyote page, but the 3 protagonists were long-known to each other and respected around the Canis pages, so it settled fairly quickly. We are seeing across the mammals a very real conflict between what the geological strata/fossil record says, and what the genetics tells us. It remains unclear of we have a timing issue, or a technology issue. Regards,   William Harris |talk  11:36, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Dire wolf (D&D)

Should Dire wolf (Dungeons & Dragons) be included in a "See also" link, in an "in popular culture" section, as a "distinguish" tag, or not at all? (I actually was trying to look this up and came to the article for the real animal as a result.) Sorry if this has already been discussed. DarjeelingTea (talk) 17:31, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps a Dire wolf (disambiguation) page could be created for links to all these pop culture references. FunkMonk (talk) 22:53, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
Hello DarjeelingTea, I asked a very similar question exactly one year ago. It lead to some growling and biting - I still have the scars - then ended in the agreement at the top of this page under the heading "direwolf". The short answer is no, however as Funkmonk advises above, you could create a disamb page and link any number of related articles from it. If you need a hand, you can reach me on my talk page. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 10:18, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Taxobox image

The current taxobox photo has long irked me since it is low res, dark, and pixelated, but I just saw two free high res photos of skeletons have been uploaded to Flickr:[3][4] Could they be contenders for a new taxobox photo? FunkMonk (talk) 19:23, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

A much better image. You can really appreciate that biter's teeth! Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 19:43, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
Any interest in this one? File:Canisdirusskull.jpg Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 04:21, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, I was thinking a colour-photo of a skull could be nice, but that one seems a bit unsharp? There are also these on Flickr:[5][6][7][8] FunkMonk (talk) 09:46, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
I concur, and number 8 - the last one - has the best shot for showing full dentition, which is what differentiates C. dirus from other Canis. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 11:01, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
Alright, here it is[9], and note it is the same skeleton as shown in the taxobox. FunkMonk (talk) 11:03, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
Would you like to place it in the taxabox and move the current skeleton elsewhere on the page? Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 09:36, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
Isn't it better to show as much of the animal as possible in the beginning of the article? That's what I attempt to do in the articles I work on, at least. FunkMonk (talk) 09:39, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
I am OK with that. I will drop it in near dentition somewhere. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 09:43, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
The juxtaposition with the skull diagram looks good to me! FunkMonk (talk) 10:03, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
Yes, it works well. I might even consider going for Featured Article in a little while. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 10:07, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
Could be a nice move, if only because that makes more people guard the page from vandalism. I could maybe recommend requesting a copyedit[10], to make the text even clearer for layreaders. FunkMonk (talk) 10:35, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
I am the first to admit that my sentence structure is most likely a little too complex for the average Wikipedia reader. I bow to your greater experience in these matters, and if that is the next step towards FA then I shall initiate. The Guild has a backlog of around one month in length. That should help get us a long way towards A-class. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 19:37, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
May not be necessary for you, since you are a native Anglophone, but I do it for every article I nominate. Apart from better flow, it can also move the wording farther away from that of the sources, which is a good thing. Oh, and I just came across this interesting blog post by fossil mammal artist Mauricio Antón about restoring the dire wolf, which may be of interest:[11] FunkMonk (talk) 09:13, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
At the top of the article, there is a hyperlink in the poster's name - chasingsabretooths - that will take you to an index of their other postings. A remarkable collection. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 10:10, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, along with Jay Matternes and Mark Hallet, he's one of the best prehistoric mammal artists alive. Some of his illustrations have been published in CC licensed papers[12], so if we're lucky, we might get some of his canids to use here one day... FunkMonk (talk) 10:16, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
It is unfortunate he included snow in a number of his works - there was no snow across the Mammoth steppe, it was far too dry. However, even those are remarkable. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 10:25, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, but it would have snowed during winter in any case, no? FunkMonk (talk) 10:28, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
It would appear not - dry steppic grasslands with most of the "spare" moisture locked in the glaciation. I wonder how the mammals, including our ancestors, reacted to going from dry and cold (around +-5 degrees) that is manageable with fur, to wet and cold (+-10 degrees) with wet fur - the coming of the cold rain and snow must have been an environmental shock. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 22:35, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
Hmm, I have seen some conflicting statements on this, this study, for example, suggests that woolly mammoths used a skin fold on their trunk to melt snow:[13][14] Sounds a bit far fetched, but at least it shows that some scientists believe there was occasional snow in their environment? --FunkMonk (talk) 11:30, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
One would assume so from that statement, although I am sometimes amazed at how some papers have not done a thorough review from all angles. That is why I like to read the results of multi-discipline research teams. It could be that they had a team of mammoth experts but with no paleoclimatologist in their group to advise on the conditions on the mammoth steppe. Else, they got some advice that led to that conclusion. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 20:08, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
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