Should Indirect fire weapons be allowed?
 

I mean having their own individual gun pages.

I am tempted to remove all IN direct fire items. They can be on the movie/tv page, but I tend to want to discourage people from adding too many items to the GUN pages.

This includes mortars, artillery, aerial bombs, cruise missiles, air burst munitions, Battle ship main guns, etc.

We do have gun platform sections within existing movie/tv pages. That allows us to list the guns on tanks, helicopters, boats, etc.

Input is welcome. Please note that I have updated the RULES section to reflect this. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

I can see removing the indirect fire weapons and most crew served weapons. I can think of one possible exception though.

The old cannons (Napoleans, Parrot guns ect.) from the 19th century were frequently used as direct fire weapons and more than once those cannons were operated by one or two individuals during a battle when there was no choice since everyone else was dead or injured. You could make the case that those should be one of the items to recieve an exception.

But I understand that the site is in danger of being overwhelmed with many too many pages so it's time to tighten things up.

By the way I was the person who changed the format on the High-Standard shotgun page. I did that probably seven or eight months ago before it had become an issue. I've gone back and corrected other pages that I did that to recently, but I hand't gotten around to the High-Standard page as of yet. Just thought I would step up. So peace and cease fire. :o

Although we call ourselves Internet Movie Firearms Database, I have generally thought of "firearms" as encompassing small arms.

Mortars are small enough and portable enough that they essentially qualify as small arms. I feel the same way about weapons like recoilless rifles and compact missile systems. Anything bigger, I don't think should have its own page, but I admit it's a gray area. For example, I am fine with the BGM-71 TOW having its own page (which it does), but I wouldn't feel the same way about the AGM-114 Hellfire. I can't really articulate why, since they're both anti-tank missiles. I guess it's because the TOW is primarily a surface-to-surface weapon that is often fitted to Humvees (though it does have air-to-surface variations), while the Hellfire is air-to-surface only and is meant to be fired from gunships.

Maybe I should put it this way: If the weapon is something that is too big or too complex to be carried and operated by platoon-sized units of infantry or cav, it probably doesn't deserve its own page on IMFDB.

So RPGs and other types of rocket and missile launchers do count?

Those would be "direct fire" weapons, so of course they count. MPM is talking about weapons that intended to cause (mostly) indiscriminate damage to large areas.

So are we talking about 60mm and 81mm Mortars? In the military a Small arm in any weapon that is less than 20mm. Do we really have a page issue on this site? How much space are you going to make removing grenades and mortars? Again I am bringing up the fact of games if we are shy of space. After all this in Internet Movie Firearms Data Base we should than limit the site to Live Action Movie and Television.

You get no argument with me about Video Games. LOL. I've been pushing that mantra for years. Its a lost cause. But that is not for just one or two mods to decide. Despite my wishes ... hahaha. I can't impose my will on the rest of the membership since there are obviously a lot of members who like creating Video game pages (despite the fact that so many of the pages are of poor quality).

It's NOT ABOUT SPACE, though. It's about clutter and the user experience. I'm torn on Mortars. Both you and I know that armories have mortars for film, but it still seems to be edging closer and closer to artillery, which I certainly DON'T want to have their own gun pages (note that I do identify artillery pieces on their own movie pages).

But I repeatedly rail about quality, NOT Quantity and yet so many members are obsessed with listing or categorizing every single possible weapon or category or combination or whatever they can think of. I think the term 'Quality not quantity' is lost on many contributors.

I strongly agree, that would completely simplify things for us on the site. It would also cure the website's "too many 10 year olds because they wanna see call of duty page" syndrome. Like I said before, the videogame section draws children and other indesirable folk to IMFDB like flies to a turd.

As for indirect fire weapons I think MT2008's suggestion for determining appropriateness could work. Or that we could decide on a case by case basis until we come up with an appropriate policy.''
I'd suggest if the weapon is primarily meant as a vehicle armament and has no dismounted version at all should be a primary deciding factor. That appears to be the difference between the BGM-71 TOW & the AGM-114 Hellfire.

I believe it should be something considered as games and even anime are at the far edge of the scope. We should lock it down to live action film and television so we can preserve that history.

I am not so sure on how to do this. We have weapon systems like the M-61 Vulcan and the 20mm Oerlikon both of those systems require a motion picture armorer as do some of the rocket systems. I really don't see a ton of these systems being posted as they are not on film. But they are on video games as you can use anything gaming. It goes back to the same issue if indirect weapons are using up space than get rid of the games.

Or it could be we do have anything to do so we start to come up with ways to remove stuff like Indirect Weapons or films with one gun in it.

In spite of the (well known) problems with the kinds of users who tend to create video game pages, I think it's HIGHLY unrealistic to expect that we're going to remove video games from the scope of media on this site. I also think it's unfair to do so. But regardless of how one views them, they're not going anywhere from here.

I think my idea is the closest thing to a workable definition of what sorts of "firearms" should be allowed on this site.