Talk:List of fictional primates

Actors

Where should actors go? Fictional or Historical or both?

I know that we're talking about the actors and their characters, but for animal representatives that gets to be fuzzy... ~ender 2003-05-12 01:30 MST

Simian Simpsons

Now, Krusty the Clown's "Mr. Teeny" sideshow monkey and Homer Simpson's "Mojo" the helper monkey can't be left out of the fictional primates section.

Can't they? You just watch me. (Hint: The correct way to get something added to a page in Wikipedia is usually to add it yourself. Merely dropping hints in the hope that someone else will do it for you rarely works.) --Paul A 05:01, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

List of non-real non-human primate-like beings

Wouldn't this be more appropriately called "List of fictional primates" or "List of fictional non-human primates" ? Dustin Asby 22:13, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You know what is interesting, what if in other fictional universes, Evolution wasn't true, and therefore Humans are not Primates, think about World of Warcraft, you see primate NPC's but the lore does indicate anywhere at all where the Azerothian humans evolved from early primates. Just a thought, and think about our nortorious fictional universe many of us are aware of that denies evolution. Nah, i'm just messing :) --173.181.122.127 (talk) 07:28, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

The list already excludes humans. Real-world evolution isn't really intended to be the basis for determining membership in this list. Authorial description in a fictional world provides all the verifiable science that we can include. Introducing real-world evolution into the membership analysis is original research, so we're limited to the question "Does the author claim that this fictional character is a primate?" If it's a primate-like robot, or a different species that by convergent evolution looks only like a primate, then it can't be included. If the author calls it a primate then it's a primate. -Thibbs (talk) 13:18, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Although that begs a question regarding ape-like characters. Assuming there's enough of them, do you think we should have a separate article to list "Fictional primate-like animals" that specifically exclude actual primate characters? A few examples off the top of my head would be pokemon and digimon monsters. If you remember correctly, they littered these lists before we cleaned them up. Ncboy2010 (talk) 17:30, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

In most cases there are better lists for those kinds of creatures. For example the List of Pokémon is the perfect place to put Pokémon, and List of Digimon is the best place for Digimon characters. I know there are other examples, though, like one-off primate-shaped robots or alien primate-like creatures, but again these are better positioned in the List of fictional robots and androids or Lists of fictional extraterrestrials. Having a list for primate-like things requires too much original research and non-authoritative opinion for my tastes. Even imagining sources could be found, it seems like problems will abound when reviewers speak of R2D2 as dog-like or E.T. looking like a naked sloth or as having a feline aversion to water. It just seems rife with NPOV-related problems. Categories aren't as strict about requiring sources, though, and since they are rely on UCS more than list articles they may be a much better way of dealing with grouping things like this. -Thibbs (talk) 20:12, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, I do see your point there. =] I have a definition in my head but it's sometimes hard to see how other people may view the conditions. Thanks! Ncboy2010 (talk) 21:33, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

How does "we can add X, Y and Z to these other lists A, B and C" lead to "so list D of X,Y,Z is undesirable?" If I'm interested in "robots that are like primates but aren't", it no use to say "the pokemon one is in Pokemon, the alien one is in ETs". We could say "King Kong shoud be in famous animate dmovie characters", "Cheetah shoul dbe in Tarzan characters", "The librarian shoul dbe in Discworld characters", and dispense with these apish lists altogether. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.139.236.96 (talk) 21:37, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Suggested merge

I have just suggested that List of fictional chimpanzees be merged with this article considering that:

1. Chimpanzees are apes
2. This article on apes purports to cover chimpanzees
3. This article on apes in fact covers 59 chimpanzees

Does anybody have any objections? -Thibbs (talk) 18:31, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

OK I have merged the articles now. It looks like they were improperly split in the first place and the content is 99% identical. -Thibbs (talk) 16:12, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Massive cleanup

I've just finished reviewing the ape characters presented in this list. According to WP:LIST and WP:LSC, a stand-alone list such as this should be properly defined to avoid it becoming an indiscriminate collection of information or becoming Listcruft. WP:LIST states that the definition of the list (i.e. the explicit inclusion criteria) should come in the lede paragraphe and of the three common selection criteria listed at WP:LSC, it is clear that "Every entry meets the notability criteria" makes the most sense for this article. I recently added a short lede to reflect this in keeping with the ledes of other "List of fictional animal" articles.
With that said, we now are faced with the large number of non-notable entries present in this list. While in most cases the work of fiction from which the character ape is taken is notable (or at least is presumptively notable by merit of the fact that a WP article on the work exists), the character itself is quite frequently non-notable per WP:INHERENT and thus should be removed from the list. This is not, after all, a "List of fiction about apes," but rather a "List of fictional apes." I am interested in cleaning up articles like this that have in many cases become near-complete listcruft and have consequently been nominated for deletion. In order to verify that each list entry is notable via sources would take me the rest of my life (or at least several years) and so I am operating under a set of assumptions which should vastly improve these articles. The major assumption is that if no article or subsection on the character exists then the character is non-notable. Of course this assumption is premised on the notion that all notable topics have WP articles written on them and this is clearly not the case. For that reason I have also been happy to accommodate redlinked entries that are supported by sources. The hope would be that an article would soon be written on this purportedly notable character ape in the future.
At any rate, I am now going to remove all un-sourced red-linked entries from this list which will greatly reduce its size. This large-scale removal of information can potentially alarm some editors, but please try to react calmly. I am not interested in removing notable entries so if entries I will have removed are in fact notable then I would be glad to see them re-inserted into the article provided that they have either a WP article devoted to them or a subsection devoted to them (or one that covers them substantially), or that they are supported by reliable sources. Cheers. -Thibbs (talk) 22:59, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Sun Wukong, Ape or Monkey?

Sun Wukong is in this list, but he is usually referred to in Journey to the West as "monkey." However, if I remember correctly, he was originally "stone ape." I read it in translation to English though, and I am not familiar enough with 14th century Mandarin to know whether such a distinction in common in the language of the time. Does anyone know? If there's a distinction made, then he probably shouldn't be in the list since he would not be an ape. If such a distinction would not have been made at the time it would make a good annotation in the list. Introw (talk) 01:21, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Merge/move

I'm planning on merging List of fictional monkeys into this article and renaming this article List of fictional primates. Ncboy2010 (talk) 15:52, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Comics

I would argue that Gorilla Grodd is far more famous than the other three comic apes listed put together. He's certainly appeared in more media. If you're shooting for most notable, he seems a shoe-in. Windthin (talk) 03:18, 27 June 2021 (UTC)