Talk:Ipotane

Requested move

I think a non-native English speaker started this page. There is no English, Greek, or Latin word "Ipotane". To have "Silenus" redirect to an article entitled "Ipotane" is misleading. I have retitled the article "Silenus" and removed all references to "Ipotanes". If the original poster would care to find the English word or its Greek original to which they meant to refer, then they should feel welcome to revise my edit. Charlie

What you did was create a duplicate of the article. I'm with you on changing it to Silenus, but since there is already a "Silenus" page, I believe we'd need an administrator to move Ipotane over and preserve it's edit history. -Ravenous 14:25, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Could a source be found? "Ipotane", perhaps just from John Mandeville's zany book of travel-marvels, isn't recognizable to me, doesn't appear at the ordinarily quite thorough http://www.theoi.com, or in my OED, and the only available article page history is User:Stemonitis' move of the page to Silenus. Who started all this? one wonders. --Wetman 03:12, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Possible Medusa Connection

According to this post I came across from another individual across the net that there is a possibility at one point Medusa once had a Horse's head and may have some possible archaic connection to Pegasus (since it was a horse creature).

EDIT - I've located the book "The Cults of the Greek States" by By Lewis Richard Farnell, the page in question is PAGE 57 that describes this connection. Lewis Richard Farnell FBA (1856–1934) was a classical scholar and Oxford academic, where he served as Vice-Chancellor from 1920 to 1923.

I hope I helped in some small way to improve the article for Ipotane if there is indeed some kind of connection.

However I'm starting to suspect that the idea of Ipotane might be some kind of odd hoax someone made up, but either way finding this page might actually improve Medusa Article alittle.74.124.162.10 (talk) 12:03, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

It is not a hoax. Here you have a image from the Mendeville's travels: http://archive.today/2014.03.18-050254/http://www.eaudrey.com/myth/ipotane.htm . However I agree that now is misleading as this is not silenius and shouldn't have a image of a silenius and much less call it Ipotane when it is a silenius--Jakeukalane (talk) 17:19, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Image used is nonsense

An ipotane has a human body, yet we have a picture with a horses body. No wonder Zeus left us... The night king kills Arya in the winds of winter (talk) 21:34, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

If you read the text closely, it speaks of how the creature is "usually" depicted—which doesn't mean that the artist's interpretation was wrong; it's just different from what you might have expected. P Aculeius (talk) 03:57, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

any picture would serve as an atypical image. Let's just use a unicorn or a zebra if we don't care to use an ipotane The night king kills Arya in the winds of winter (talk) 05:18, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

The illustration is identified as an ipotane in the work cited. If you can find a public domain image that better illustrates the concept—and can be clearly identified as such, preferably by accompanying text, feel free to add it. P Aculeius (talk) 05:39, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

It looks to me that the distinction of Centaurs having horses bodies and Ipotanes having horses heads only became a rigid convention in modern times in fantasy fiction works. Historically, there was no clear distinction or clear definition – only that Ipotanes were part horse. It's nonsense to claim the image is atypical when it's the only image we have. SpinningSpark 07:57, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

I've updated the page with a better ipotane image that is already on Wikimedia under the CC license. It isn't the only image we have. We have even more. The night king kills Arya in the winds of winter (talk) 07:59, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

you are contradicting yourself with that revert. If an ipotane is any hybrid, then the Ipotane I posted is better than the centaur you restored. Otherwise, let's redirect this page to centaur, which specifies "horse lower body" (but has a Pic of an entire horse except head) The night king kills Arya in the winds of winter (talk) 08:07, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

It's not a better image in the sense of provenance. It is your own WP:OR that the Tikbalang is an Ipotane. That comes from an entirely different mythology – Philippines rather than Greek. The picture I uploaded, on the other hand, comes from Melville's book – the person who invented the term as far as we can tell. The ipotane is distinct from the centaur, at least in modern fantasy, so a redirect would be inappropriate. So would a merge in my opinion because centaurs are genuinely from ancient Greek mythology whereas ipotanes are not. SpinningSpark 08:51, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

It's OK everyone, I made a new ipotane, this one with more clothes and a job Officer Ipotane (talk) 02:08, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

@Officer Ipotane: I like your initiative, but I believe using the image from Mandeville's work (which also has an appropriate license) is a more appropriate depiction of the article subject. What do others think? BeReasonabl (talk) 04:14, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I think we can both agree, that's an image of a centaur having a seizure. I'm not sure how it helps demonstrate what a horse headed human looks like. Officer Ipotane (talk) 04:22, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

The thing is, the old illustration has historic significance, and represents a disinterested attempt to represent the subject of this article, published and verifiable both as to where it comes from and what it purports to do. Your whimsical pictures—some of which are more inappropriate than others—represent your own interpretation of the subject, in the way that say, a map that accurately represents locations or events that can be verified does not. Essentially what's called for here is a public domain image made by someone else that can be independently verified as representing what it purports to be. You can't draw what you think an ipotane should look like and say, "here one is, now get rid of that smelly old woodcut".

Maybe if you at least had consensus for your illustrations and there were no historic pictures to use, you could get away with a drawing that doesn't add weird details, like the evening dress and bar setting. But there's clearly no consensus for that, and the fact that you keep using sockpuppet accounts to get around the block, and keep adding stuff that several other editors are telling you doesn't belong, here and in a couple of other articles, to represent your personal truth about ipotanes, means that you're not likely to obtain consensus for adding these pictures. Some of us at least appreciate your creativity—we're not trying to stomp all over your ideas. But you're ignoring basic Wikipedia policies, and seem to have a limited understanding of the principles of editing. Perhaps you might consider ways to contribute to the encyclopedia that aren't likely to be objected to, while you become better acquainted with Wikipedia policy. P Aculeius (talk) 05:17, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

That's a primary source, read wp:rs Officer Ipotane (talk) 05:21, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

There's no rule against using "primary sources" in Wikipedia. The main reason to use caution with them is so that the subjects of biographical articles don't get to write their own narratives. This article isn't biographical, and there's no concern that ipotanes are trying to manipulate the source to make themselves sound more interesting. Not even sure how Mandeville's narrative qualifies as a "primary source", since he doesn't seem to be claiming to have seen any ipotanes himself—but even if he did, that wouldn't prevent anyone from citing his work for what they look like or how they behave. P Aculeius (talk) 05:40, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

We don't have reliabily sourced illustrations. Go to any landmark, and see that it's a photo taken by a wikipedian. Besides, who do you think has seen an ipotane to draw one? Cmon... 166.205.97.78 (talk) 05:54, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

There is a meaningful difference between a geotagged image of a real-world landmark and a fantastical drawing of an ipotane. BeReasonabl (talk) 06:11, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

We know where the illustration comes from: Mandeville's book. And that it purports to illustrate an ipotane. I don't know whether Mandeville personally approved of it—his description could indeed be a second-hand account of a hippopotamus, as some modern scholars seem to have interpreted it, and if he didn't see any himself then he may not have been in a position to make or judge an accurate illustration. But it's what went out as an illustration of an ipotane centuries ago, and it may be the only historical depiction currently in the public domain. A picture you claim to have made yourself is difficult to authenticate, or to verify what it is; and if you told A.I. to draw "a lawyer/bartender with a horse's head" then we don't credibly have an illustration of an ipotane, because the A.I. had no intent to draw one.

Your interpretation of Mandeville's description is just your idea of what he meant—and as I said, he may not have had a clear idea what it really looked like—and there's no way to verify whether you're drawing what you really think an ipotane would look like, or just something you could argue is an ipotane, with nobody able to prove you wrong. That's the problem with making original artwork for Wikipedia: some things can be verified independently, but what you believe a mythological beast might look like can't. What Mandeville or his illustrator thought an ipotane should look like is credible, simply because they weren't doing it for Wikipedia or to troll the internet; even if the artist was having a good laugh at people's credulousness, his work influenced how people envisioned ipotanes thereafter. The same can't be said of anything that you or I make up on the spot. That's why the original illustration can be used, and your artwork—however you produced it—probably should not. P Aculeius (talk) 06:36, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

That's a really cool opinion, but it doesn't map to policy. Cite policy. Officer Ipotane (talk) 07:14, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm explaining why your pictures don't comport with policy. Your pictures have a counfounding mixture of unverifiability, lack of independence and lack of neutrality because we don't know anything about you or what's in your mind when you're making them, or even whether you're making them yourself or just telling a computer what to draw, and because you're just obsessively making them over and over without paying attention to what other editors are telling you about their suitability or your desire to replace what's clearly an acceptable illustration. The fact that you seem to have tunnel vision with regard to what is and isn't correct, when the article clearly states that the appearance and characteristics of ipotanes are only vaguely defined—a quality amply illustrated by the old picture—and that you're defying editing bans and multiple sockpuppet bans in order to do it—make it very unlikely that anyone will regard your pictures as appropriate images for this or any other article. You could remedy this over time by proving that you can comply with Wikipedia policies regarding sockpuppets, and that you understand and can write in accordance with verifiability, citation to scholarly sources that support what you write, the ability to weigh differing points of view without insisting that whatever you think must be the only acceptable truth, the ability to seek and find consensus with other editors when making potentially controversial changes, and of course, NPoV. Right now you're a long way from that point. P Aculeius (talk) 14:20, 18 November 2022 (UTC)