Mods - When are we going to remove mythology tag?

Question

New Community Consensus on use of Mythology Tag

very few people care about the pedantic semantic difference between myth & mythology.

for all intents & purposes, mythology means imaginary fiction.

our itihasas (iti-hasa - like so, it was) are history, although quite old to the point that people don't believe them, just as people don't believe in jesus or pretty much anything before the invention of photography, or anything after the invention of photoshop.

the tags scripture, itihasa, purana, upanishads are enough to cover our ancient kathas. I also see a user, who is a known skeptic, frequently adding the mythology tag, even going so far as to remove the scripture tag and replace it with mythology.

Are are you going to remove it ? When ?

Answer 1

TODAY !

The answer for 'When are we going to remove the mythology tag?' - is TODAY AUG 1 2020.

It's DONE.
All mythology tags have been removed from existing questions, and the tag has been blacklisted, so no future questions can be tagged as mythology.

The primary reason to remove it is - mythology means false/fake/fiction, for all people except a few. Look up its dictionary meaning

As I mentioned earlier - scripture is the most suitable English-word tag to replace it.
Because all our epics are actual life accounts of Avatars with morals on how to lead life.

If a person already knows which scripture ('praman'), they can use 'itihasa', or 'purana', 'ramayana' or 'mahabharata' or 'vedas' or 'upanishads', or at the very least 'katha'.

If it is not part of any known scripture, but part of recent recorded history, hey can use 'parampara' (tradition or history).

If it is neither scripture nor recent history, and primarily hearsay, we can tag it as 'folklore'

Thanks to everyone who worked towards blacklisting that misleading tag... and to the naysayers too.

जयम् !

Answer 2

The discussion on the tag has already been done in the post you linked. In the post, the answer which is the most acceptable asks to remove the tag. It's futile to discuss the same here.

Also, this site is HinduismSE, the tags should square well with the belief system of 'Hinduism'. Mythology tag is more suited for SkeptismSE or StorySE (if the site lurks); there is no word in scriptures for any event which can be translated to mythology. 'Hindu' scriptures claim 'supposed' mythology as history & since this site is based on Hinduism or gives value to scriptural claims only we should stick with scriptural 'itihaas' than with skeptical 'mythology'. 'Mythology' tag is unnecessary encroachment here on HinduismSE. Whether any 'X' event actually happened or not is not our concern, it's concern of historians or whateverian. But if such happening is documented in scriptures as Itihaasas then call it itihaas as again - this is HinduismSE. Of course, even the word 'Hinduism' is also not scriptural & need to be get rid of in distant future but as of now we don't have any replacement of the word 'Hinduism' unlike 'Mythology'where we have very apt replacement called 'itihaas'.

At last, this post is not to justify for existence of the tag in either of the direction but on implementation of the decision carried out in the post posted by @Tejaswi. So, mods should decide looking at community consensus in New Community Consensus on use of Mythology Tag about fate of the inflammatory tag.

I am not arguing in either support or oppose of the tag but asking when the effect of the post posed by Tejaswi going to come into picture? Or the post and answers there were mere linguistic drama?

Answer 3

Any word which has any possible connotation of 'false/imagination/fiction/lie' must not be used when referring to our scriptures.

Itihasa, Purana & Scripture are enough to categorize most mythology questions. For remaining, we can deal on case by case basis. Within those two, we have 2 itihasa + 18 purana = 20 different tag options for detail.

Here are definitions of alternate words proposed earlier, and why they are all bad :

Myth:

1. a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

2. a widely held but false belief or idea.

Mythology:

collection/study of myths

So, @KeshavSrinivasan's comment :

And by the way, while the word myth has these two disparate meanings in English, the word mythology has only one meaning and that is related to the non-pejorative usage of the word myth, i.e. "a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events."

doesn't seem to have google's blessing - since mythology is just a collection of myths, it could mean a 1. collection of facts, or 2. collection of lies.

Legend:

a traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but unauthenticated.

Story:

an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment.

Epic:

a long poem, typically one derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures or the history of a nation.

Since all this confusion arises with English translations, we still need a word to denote stories but which doesn't have the common negative connotation as imaginative fiction, so my suggestion is to use the original Sanskrit word

Katha

Why do we even need tags anyway.. They're just an additional piece of information. Keep in mind, this stackoverflow site was created for programming questions with so many different languages, so that people can get alerts for specific tags relating to their expertise. Even if we get rid of the tagging practice on HSE, it won't affect much.