Template talk:Mesopotamian mythology
Archive available at Template talk:Mesopotamian mythology/Archive. — Phil Welch Are you a fan of the band Rush? 00:56, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Purpose of the Myth Box
[edit]PURPOSE: This Myth Box is to introduce briefly the fundamental topics of Mesopotamian mythology with a short description of each. It is to make it easy to navigate around the various relevant topics. These topics are grouped together in the Myth Box.
- Name: Meso Myth is shorter and easier to use than "Mesopotamian mythology"! (For that reason, a mirror Myth Box has already been created there to replace this one.)
Analysis
[edit]To be understood, technical words need descriptions. The descriptions of the names in the original Myth Box have been erased. This analysis discusses that erasure.
I am the original creator of this Myth Box and the only one who has made any substantive edits. One user has an ongoing dispute with a third party, and apparently that dispute has spilled over here. The resultant edits have blanked more than half of this template, leaving mostly empty space that wastes bandwidth on each article that uses it. Moreover, the edits left dangling conjunctions showing that the edits were made carelessly and without due consideration.
Wikipedia's Myth Project has devised several standards and models of which this series was a particular beautiful example as originally designed. One of the standards of the Myth Project is to have a list of links to articles pertinent to mythology. A mere list of gods with mostly empty space and dangling conjunctions serves no purpose and wastes space.
As originally designed, each description was linked to an article important to Mesopotamian mythology.
A template on Mesopotamian mythology is incomplete without a link to Mesopotamian astrology.
For example, Ishtar is paired with the article on Babylonian astrology, which is the historical origin of modern Western astrology. Planets were named after Mesopotamian gods. Ishtar was the planet Venus. This last pairing is interesting since it is also important to the field of comparative mythology comparing gods of the Near East with those of the Roman Empire.
A template on Mesopotamian mythology is incomplete without a link to Zecharia Sitchin's popular ancient astronaut theory.
Mesopotamian mythology has also appeared in popular literature such as the series by Zecharia Sitchin. Sitchin's science fiction series about the Mesopotamian gods purported that they were actually ancient astronauts. This has inspired a number of fictional and semi-fictional works, including popular films and TV series such as Stargate. Now I think his theory was science fiction and it it is extremely popular. The movie and TV series have generated millions of dollars and has attracted millions of viewers for decades. This shows how Mesopotamian mythology is relevant today.
These are just two examples of what was lost when half the Myth Box was blanked out. All descriptions were erased.
Others were:
- Utnapisthtim and the world flood: The world flood myth is what makes Utnapishtim important. He is the template for Noah's ark.
- Tammuz and new life: "New life" is what the epic of Tammuz about; he returns from the dead!
- Zu, the lion-eagle: Zu is interesting because of his bizarre shape: half lion, half eagle!
- Kingu, mankind's blood: Mankind was created out of Kingu's blood. This is a common theme in creation myths!
- Gilgamesh and the Cedar Forest: The hero Gilgamesh almost obtains immortality by travelling to the world of the gods: the Cedar Forest!
- Enlil and the 7 who decree fate: Mesopotamian mythology is based on these 7 gods!!!
- Resheph and plague and war: Resheph is the demon of plague and war. Another user User:Oliver Lineham agreed, and put in the latest link.
- Enkidu and Namtar had brief descriptions of what they are.
- Marduk and Babylon: Marduk is the high god and patron of Babylon, that's why this god is important!
How can a reader figure out what these Mesopotamian names are without a description?!!!
This Myth Box Series, as originally designed, matches exactly the beautiful Greek Myth series. Both break down the mythology into smaller pieces so as not to waste space and bandwidth with a needlessly long template. This makes for easy navigation and helps the reader understand the whole mythology by grouping it into topics.
This Myth Box is the introduction to the series. The main topics are introduced, and links to gods and concepts are displayed to attract interest.
The altered version does not seem to follow any particular criteria at all. It is half empty space without links to any topical articles whatsoever and with dangling conjunctions.
Without descriptions this Myth Box is useless.
- C. dentata 
21:39, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Removal of Descriptions
[edit]The editor who created this template did so only to replace Template:Mesopotamian mythology because it had been updated and errors fixed and he apparently awanted his old version back. Insitead of taking the time to reupdate every single last article he switched to his new WP:FORK template, I am copying the old template over and putting it here so all the new links work as well.
Castaneta Denatatas, please stop recreating a new template everytime you want to make changes. You must have something like 5 different versions of this same template floating around. Also, it would help that when someone points out mistakes, errors, and just plain unrelated links that you actually try to listen instead of launching into personal attacks and doing a runaround of policies to try to get your way anyway. DreamGuy 19:19, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
- Your changes are really poor. You have simply blanked half of it. Now there are dangling conjunctions and unattractive blank spaces using up most of the template space. This is silly. You have some sort of grievance with a user named Elonka, and you are allowing your personal feelings to damage other areas of Wikipedia randomly.
- Your half-blanked version does not even comply with the Myth Project guidelines. The point of a myth box is to have interesting links that explain the relevance of the myths, not simply a list of gods. This list of gods is meaningless, unintelligent and serves no purpose.
- All the links as originally designed were relevant to the mythology, and follow exactly the same series of templates for Greek mythology. As originally designed, the Myth Series templates are easy to navigate, brief, and provided quick links to articles beyond simply gods. These articles are on concepts, not merely.
- The Myth series of templates is not five versions of the same template. They are each different templates that divide the Mythology into digestible topics. This allows the user to navigate around easily without having a huge template taking up too much space in each article.
- The series follows the standards developed in the myth project, and are modeled closely after the same series in Greek Mythology. The current namefor this introductory template (Meso myth) is shorter and easier for editors to use than Mesopotamian mythology which I also created.
- I am the original creator of this particular series and the only one who has made any substantive edits.