Unrecomended Sources
This page is a list of resources with known issues so glaring we do not feel comfortable displaying them in the primary site archives.
Why display them at all then? Because this is an archive, and the sources may still be useful to someone even if the information listed on/by them is suspect.
In cases of a source being listed here in part for serious abuse accusations towards those running them, it also prevents The Missing Stair problem that is often seen in niche communities.
DISCLAIMER! This page exists to let the reader know about certain issues and allow them to judge for themselves if the source is still viable for their use. This page serves not to attack the sites or individuals listed, but to ensure people are adequately warned about the academic issues or patterns of dangerous behavior shown. DO NOT HARASS THOSE ON THIS LIST OR PEOPLE WHO USE THESE WEBSITES. This is unproductive and unkind behavior.
Plural Resources:
Reasoning: Astrea is a large part of plural history and runs one of the oldest still working sites left and a megalist wouldn't be complete without them, however they unfortunately have a pattern of poor behavior and academic dishonesty. Specifically there are notable instances of misdefining things and plagarizing, making using them as a source nonideal. Their site also has a Natural System elitism flavor to it. Sources [HERE] and [HERE].
Unfortunately its hard to completely avoid citing Astrea for some things as they are the only remaining live source in many cases- but information from this site should be taken with a grain of salt.
'Blossom' Discord Bot and the PluralHub Discord Server
Reasoning: While Pluralhub itself has fallen fairly far out of favor nowadays, the scraped data from the now defunct bot upkept by some of the staff is the listed source and citation for a lot of terms in the community, and many repeated definitions come from it. However this information and subsequent crediting is all deeply suspect at best as there has been known plagarizing, misdefining, poor crediting, and other unfortunate behavior surrounding things added to this bot. Be cautious of citations of term definitions that appear to trace back to this bot with no other live links of coinage, as the crediting or defintion may be incorrect. Source [HERE] for a lot of the drama around this server and bot.
Reasoning: Unlike other poorly cited term hoard websites, this resource has a lot of popularity, which makes it all the more of an academic nightmare. Pluralpedia contains a massive amount of misdefined and dubiously credited or uncredited terms as its backbone is data scraped off blossombot and thus all the problems with blossom bot (see above) are still present in pluralpedia's entries. Many entries are also poorly coined. The issues with site structure and data presentation being misleading about what labels are actually commonly used and worth having a whole seperate page aside, long term community labels were more narrowly defined than they actually are seemingly only to legitamatize certain microlabels further.
Because this website is a citation travesty yet is touted as one of the best plural resources and is unlikely to shape up any time soon as a number of systems have tried to fight the poor citation and new page standards, it is added to this list for academic sins. While it still useful for some things, one cannot depend on it for functioning citations or fully accurate information.
Nonhuman Resources:
Reasoning: While many of those using the forums are fine people, the staff have expressed anti-plural, anti-fictionkind, and eletist therian seperatist sentiment and its incredibly difficult to get your posts deleted from the site should you ever wish to request this. In addition, there is serious evidence towards some of the staff and former owner LycanTheory committing bestality and/or supporting committing bestialty. Source [HERE].
Because of these statements the staff and former staff have said on record, it makes this community space not one we can reccomend.
The staff that runs Therian Guide also runs Otherkin Phenomena.