Aliasing grey_alien → gray_alien
Link to alias

Reason:

Minor spelling variation, but means the same thing. Wikipedia uses the "grey" variation, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_alien

-1. By the looks of all the tags where "gray*" is aliased to "grey*", it seems 'grey' is the standard here.

Since gray_alien is mostly a species tag, I see no problems with reversing this alias though.

I would be fine with a reverse alias as well.

Can we maybe give them a proper name? The theoretical home based on the star maps given by "Abductees" points to Zeta Reticuli, which gave them the name "Reticulan." The UFO trilogy (Aftermath, Aftershock, and Afterlight) uses this name, I think we should here, too.

Furrin_Gok said:
Can we maybe give them a proper name? The theoretical home based on the star maps given by "Abductees" points to Zeta Reticuli, which gave them the name "Reticulan." The UFO trilogy (Aftermath, Aftershock, and Afterlight) uses this name, I think we should here, too.

For Greys from that particular franchise, maybe, but I think making that the required name for all Greys is too restrictive. Nothing requires other settings (or even stuff not based on a specific setting) to use that name.

TL;DR: -1

imagoober said:
For Greys from that particular franchise, maybe, but I think making that the required name for all Greys is too restrictive. Nothing requires other settings (or even stuff not based on a specific setting) to use that name.

TL;DR: -1

Let me clarify: Real life people who reported being abducted by aliens drew a star map that pointed to Zeta Reticuli. This has nothing to do with the game, as the game is borrowing the name from real life reports.

Furrin_Gok said:
Can we maybe give them a proper name? The theoretical home based on the star maps given by "Abductees" points to Zeta Reticuli, which gave them the name "Reticulan." The UFO trilogy (Aftermath, Aftershock, and Afterlight) uses this name, I think we should here, too.

Grey aliens are a staple of pop culture, well distanced from the original reports. I'm not sure many people would know the term Zeta Reticulan—I didn't until this thread—but everyone knows what a grey alien is. If most of the pictures were from the UFO series it'd make sense, like imagoober pointed out, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

rezi said:
Grey aliens are a staple of pop culture, well distanced from the original reports. I'm not sure many people would know the term Zeta Reticulan—I didn't until this thread—but everyone knows what a grey alien is. If most of the pictures were from the UFO series it'd make sense, like imagoober pointed out, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Having it as an alias means people don't need to know it's the name of them. Anybody searching for Grey_alien still gets the exact same results. Stop trying to pin it to the game when it's a real non-game name.

Furrin_Gok said:
Having it as an alias means people don't need to know it's the name of them. Anybody searching for Grey_alien still gets the exact same results. Stop trying to pin it to the game when it's a real non-game name.

Sorry, bad wording on my part. I'm aware it's a real term, but my argument is it's not that popular. People may get the same results with an alias, but we could say the same if we aliased "duck" to "Anatida", the family of ducks. Is it true? Sure. Helpful? Not too likely.

If Zeta Reticulan were a more popular term in general, I'd support the alias. Separately, if most of the pictures affected by the alias were from the UFO series, I'd support the alias since the relevance to the source material (UFO) would override the unpopularity of the term.

Furrin_Gok said:
Having it as an alias means people don't need to know it's the name of them. Anybody searching for Grey_alien still gets the exact same results. Stop trying to pin it to the game when it's a real non-game name.

That argument in favor of aliasing can also be used the other way, with reticulan -> grey_alien, since the latter is more widely known.

The problem I'm having with not changing the tag is the usage of a color. We typically try to avoid that.

Bumping; this alias is still needed imho, since the grey/gray spelling is a common issue. An alien implication would be great as well, as would a humanoid implication but mostly the former is important.

What about Martian, since they're mostly thought to be from Mars?

Untamed said:
What about Martian, since they're mostly thought to be from Mars?

Most depictions of "martians" are far different than the depictions of Reticulans.

What about something more... casual?

Some ideas:

little_gray_alien
typical_gray_alien
traditional_gray_alien
north_american_gray_alien
new_mexican_gray_alien
roswell_gray_alien

With varying degrees of seriousness, of course :)

Untamed said:
What about Martian, since they're mostly thought to be from Mars?

No, Martians are the green ones. Greys are supposedly from Zeta Reticuli (hence Reticulians).

SnowWolf said:
roswell_gray_alien

I like that one. Leaves no room for misinterpretion, nobody would tag that for aliens that are grey in color, but not Greys.

Genjar said:
I like that one. Leaves no room for misinterpretion, nobody would tag that for aliens that are grey in color, but not Greys.

It honestly was my favorite too, but I was a little shy of saying so. :) While they appear in many other places, area-51, roswell, etc are all prety strongly associated with the little gray dudes.

Oh and I"ve never heard of these reticulated python alien things.

+1 for grey_alien, since that seems to be the most popular name everywhere else.

Genjar said:
I like that one. Leaves no room for misinterpretion, nobody would tag that for aliens that are grey in color, but not Greys.

I think that the "greys" are common enough in pop culture that that scenario would be as likely as somebody tagging an image of a spectacled_bear or sun_bear as a black_bear, i.e. it's generally understood as a name rather than a descriptor.

klorpa said:
I think that the "greys" are common enough in pop culture that that scenario would be as likely as somebody tagging an image of a spectacled_bear or sun_bear as a black_bear, i.e. it's generally understood as a name rather than a descriptor.

You'd think that, but you'd be surprised by the general public's tagging habits.

See: brown_bear. People pretty much tag that for ANY brown furred bear, despite the fact that brown bears have specific visual anatomy and physical characteristics that make it a brown bear (for example, the characteristic hunchback)

However... people on this site just tag any brown colored bear as brown bear. People do this with black_bear as well actually, tagging any and all black colored bears as black bears despite lacking their specific qualities such as the muzzle markings, just it's more blatant with the brown bears.

I suppose my point is that while I WISH we could just trust the general public to tag properly, more often than not they won't, either due to ignorance or laziness.

Im all for roswell_alien.

the city of roswell,NM and the area around it is generally most associated out all places on earth with what are also referred to as grays because of apparent photographs of a cut open alien in a military hospital after WW2 as well as sightings and written documentation...

Bumping to point out that this species is also tagged as greys on occasion. As it's plural, and grey is an invalid_color, we can't use it as the "official" tag, but it could be aliased to it.

Just bumping this because there are currently about 50 posts with grey_alien and gray_alien.
+1 for either Roswell_Greys or lesser used Zeta_Reticulans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_alien