Issue with "PDW" as a weapon category
 

I've been having a discussion about this with Mazryonh recently, and I have some misgivings about using it as a category for weapons.

The main issue is it's extremely poorly defined. PDW was a marketing term invented by H&K to sell a version of the MP5K with a folding stock. It's since been used to refer to everything from totally normal SMGs (Jatimatic, PP2000) to compact assault rifles (Magpul PDR, XM8 Compact). Granted, there's a "proper" meaning (SMGs firing special AP ammunition), but for every example there's two things called PDWs that don't qualify.

As a result, when pages are listed by weapon type, it allows compact assault rifles and machine pistols to end up in a section that's supposed to be for SMGs. Our own Category:Personal_Defense_Weapon includes four 5.56mm compact assault rifles, the QCW-05 which is available in two pistol cartridge chamberings, and the PP2000 which is a 9x19mm SMG. It makes it hard to say "this is in the wrong category" when we're using a term that means whatever a gun company's marketing department feels like it means.

I suppose we could define exactly what we want it to mean somewhere, but it's really no good as a category if you have to tell people what it means before they understand why only some things called PDWs can go in the PDW section. I personally favour just getting rid of it and putting things in either the pistol, SMG or rifle categories.

I agree that axing the PDW category would be appropriate.

Yeah, its one of those poorly defined terms that is too broad to use.

I say axe the category as well. All the guns listed there fit other, more clearly defined categories anyway. Despite slightly larger caliber, the MP7 and P90 can be lumped into, and effectively are, submachine guns. The PP-2000 is no different from any other subgun. The KAC PDW, despite its smaller round, is no less a compact carbine than the CQBR and G36C are. The L22, HK53, and PDR all fire 5.56x45mm and are equivalent to the CQBR and G36C as well.

Narrowing down an overused label
 

I'll be the first to admit that the PDW label is overused in some cases, but it can be narrowed down for the purposes of this wiki. For the sake of argument, the HK MP7A1 and the FN P90 will be used as baselines for this.

1. A true PDW round is an SCHV (Small Caliber, High Velocity) round, usually based on a miniaturized assault rifle round, that was developed from the ground up for PDW usage. This allows for the compactness considered key to a PDW's niche, which is CQB, while retaining the ability to pierce armour rated Level IIIA or lower.
2. A true PDW, and not just a weapon that fires PDW rounds, has both a stock and a dedicated place to put your off-hand, straight out of the box. This can be a vertical foregrip or a sufficiently-long handguard. This is important since both of those features simplify aiming, an important trait when it comes to CQB or a defensive situation.
3. A true PDW must be select-fire, or otherwise capable of fully-automatic fire.

A firearm must meet all three requirements to be considered an actual PDW. With these in mind, it's much easier to determine what is an actual PDW and what isn't. Some examples follow.

• The MP5K-PDW doesn't fit because it doesn't meet requirement 1, despite fulfilling requirements 2 and 3.
• The G36C, CQBR, HK53, Magpul PDR and other ultracompact 5.56mm NATO carbines don't meet requirement 1 either since the 5.56mm NATO wasn't designed from the ground up for use in a PDW role, and isn't a miniaturized assault rifle round.
• The PS90 doesn't meet requirement 3, and is just a bullpup SCHV carbine.
• The AS Val, Groza, and other 9x39mm firearms don't count because they don't use SCHV rounds, therefore not meeting requirement 1. The 9x39mm round was also first used in the VSS Vintorez, definitely not a CQB weapon. Instead, the 9x39mm round is just a specialized assault rifle round that was enlarged from the original 7.62x39mm round.
• (Machine) pistols firing PDW ammunition don't count because they don't meet requirements 2 and 3.
• By the same token, the PP-2000 and its armour-piercing configuration of 9x19mm bullets don't meet requirement 1 either because the 9x19mm round wasn't designed from the ground up for the PDW niche, nor is it an SCHV round.

From these premises I would conclude that the the QCW-05 and its variants, along with the MINSAS (chambered for 5.56x30mm ammunition), are in fact PDWs. The QCW-05 uses 5.8x21mm ammunition, which is a miniaturized version of the Chinese 5.8x42mm assault rifle round. This allows it to meet requirement 1, while the rest of the QCW-05's design (along with its variants) allows it to meet the other requirements. Similarly, the MINSAS also meets requirement 1, as it uses a shortened version of 5.56mm NATO ammunition.

Don't get me wrong; if the mods decide to remove the PDW label entirely and lump its entries into the Carbine or SMG categories I'm all for it. I still believe, however, with the tightening of the definition on this site the PDW label could be useful for a specific niche of weaponry, just narrower than some firearm manufacturers would have us believe.

Seems like reasonable criteria to me.

Surely the PS90 isn't a PDW anyway by dint of being a civilian rifle?

The trouble is, this basically means all "true" PDWs are SMGs firing posh bullets, so we might as well just put them in that category and spare everyone the confusion of dealing with all the other things called PDWs.

I was analyzing it based on the fact that is a platform firing PDW rounds (an SCHV round based on miniaturized assault rifle ammunition). It meets the first two requirements I mentioned, but not the third, so it's just a fancy semiautomatic carbine.

DHS officially desiganted the p229 as a PDW. And its a 40 caliber compact auto.

Eliminate the PWD category. It's just a bunch of short assault rifles and super-compact SMGs firing tiny rounds.

Well, that sounds like they succumbed entirely to the market hype right there. It's a service pistol.

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by "posh." I thought such a term meant "luxurious and expensive." The various different PDW rounds have so far been proprietary and limited to just the companies developing them, yes, but that's only because we haven't got around to testing them all in a controlled fashion yet to determine which is the best of them all. And the definition I gave should be useful for the purposes of classification on this wiki; I believe that an FN P90, or a MINSAS, etc. has some characteristics separating it from, say, an MP5 or a FAMAS, and if those characteristics are properly defined, then we will end up with a category that isn't based on market hype. Adding these rules to the top of that category page then would give everyone on this wiki access to these clear rules to abide by, regardless of any manufacturer's marketing campaign(s).

Sorry, I forgot Americans don't tend to throw that word around quite as much as we do over here. "Fancy," then. They fire a fancy pistol round.

The issue I have here is why we need to have a category on pages that only really applies to a handful of weapons but is applied to a whole slew of other weapons by the people who make those weapons. Having the term PDW on pages (Ie, having a weapon list category called "SMGs / PDWs") just means people, in good faith, are going to be adding the kind of weapons that shouldn't be in that category because the manufacturers say they belong there. I should know, I did it with the XM8 Compact (HK says it's a PDW) and the discussion made me realise the only thing having "PDW" around is good for is confusing people.

I used to be a study abroad student over there, so I knew what you meant. ;)

I agree. My preference is that we not have a PDW category for this reason. Mazryonh, while I appreciate the thought you put into what defines a PDW, I am still reluctant to include this category. We're over-categorizing enough as-is, and regardless of what criteria you use to define PDWs, the fact is that it's unnecessary because it applies to only a select few firearms which differ from traditional submachine guns in (essentially) minor ways. OK, so they fire ammunition that differs from a traditional SMG - arguing that they deserve an entirely new category for this reason is like saying that the G11 doesn't deserve to be labeled as an "assault rifle" because it fires caseless ammo (maybe it's an "Advanced Combat Rifle"?)

BTW, the fact that people are already using the PDW category on pages for weapons like the HK33 and L85 (which have compact variants) demonstrates their poor grasp of the PDW definition.

I see. I knew about "Port Out, Starboard Home," but aside from that the only exposure to the term I've had was Victoria Beckham's old stage name. But as I said before, it's only "fancy" because the best of the lot hasn't been determined yet. Once that has been done and standardization takes place, more manufacturers will offer them and they'll be as "ho-hum" as the venerable 9x19mm cartridge.

And it's not the first time I've had to clear this up, but I'm not American (or British, for that matter).

Actually, don't we already categorize firearms based on their relative barrel lengths and the type of role their cartridge plays? Just to take the G3 design, the basic firearm has been changed from the original battle rifle (the original G3 using 7.62mm NATO), to assault rifle (HK33 using 5.56mm NATO), to compact carbine (the HK53), to submachine gun (MP5 and its variants). Tightening up the PDW designation would allow for another manageable category.

I do not believe that the G11 would be an uncategorizable anomaly. The term "Advanced Combat Rifle" is not a meaningful term--analyzing the G11's cartridge's performance would, however, yield better results. I'm sure someone who knows more about the physics of firearms cartridges and their resulting velocity/energy retention at various ranges would be able to tell us whether the the G11's cartridge comes close enough to the 7.62mm NATO's performance levels to be considered a battle rifle, or if it is instead closer to the 5.56mm NATO's performance levels, which would make it an assault rifle. If or when caseless firearms become more commonplace, giving them an another supercategory labelled "Caseless Firearms" would be appropriate.

Why not just copy-and-paste a refined version of the PDW definition I offered to the top of its category telling contributors that "for inclusion to this category, prospective firearms must meet all of the following criteria"? That way, contributors have no excuse for not knowing the rules.

The problem is, that assumes that everyone will actually visit Category:PDW rather than, say, seeing it at the bottom of one page and adding it to another it shouldn't be on thinking they're doing the right thing, or adding something incorrect to the SMG / PDW listing on a page, or suchlike. You wouldn't think to look for rules in Category:Assault Rifle before adding an M16 to a page, now would you?

It's far easier to just not use the term at all, that way people won't encounter it and so won't add it to things accidentally. You'd never put an XM8 compact or Magpul PDR into a category called "submachine gun," after all.

Yes, we categorize firearms based on barrel lengths and types of cartridges, but "the type of role their cartridge plays"? No, not really. And you are stretching the definition of "role" here a little too far. The "role" of weapons like the P90 and MP7 is just not very different from that of submachine guns - they're basically CQB weapons that were designed to have slightly better range and penetration than submachine guns. "Analyzing" their ballistic performance is not necessary; try stepping back and looking at the bigger picture.

Exactly. When categories are vague at all, we're inviting these sorts of problems. And I'd rather not deal with them. Mazryonh is expecting people to be a little too much like him - which just does not seem reasonable.

And anyway, the bigger problem for me is that it seems a little too hard to take PDW seriously as an actual "category" of weapons that is highly distinct from "submachine guns". I know that there is now an article on Wikipedia which treats them as such, but IMFDB is not Wikipedia, and remember that while this site may strive to identify guns in the media, we are still ultimately not a firearms information Wiki per se.

Actually, as of this post's writing there are now paragraphs attempting to define "Assault Rifle" and "Battle Rifle" in those two categories.

If "type of firearm" categories all-sported definitions which were sufficiently accurate and specific, most disputes over which weapon(s) belong to which categories should be easy to resolve. More knowledgeable users could then correct any erroneous additions to these categories made by the less knowledgeable ones, allowing for a (mostly) self-correcting system.

It's funny you mentioned that. I remember how Colt themselves once called their CAR-15 Model 607 (featuring a 10-inch barrel) a "Submachine Gun" despite in reality being an ultracompact carbine by virtue of the round it used.

I was under the impression that the P90 and MP7 were also made to duplicate the armour-piercing abilities of (ultra)compact carbines using assault rifle or battle rifle ammunition, but with much less problematic muzzle flash and blast when used unsuppressed, while in some ways being more compact to allow stowage in vehicles or the like. After all, an FN SCAR-H CQC (a 10-inch barrelled firearm using 7.62mm NATO ammunition) would certainly strain hearing protection more than a FN P90 if both were used unsuppressed at different times.

No, I just thought people would see the rules and follow them, knowing that they might have their membership privileges revoked if they make repeated frivolous or incorrect edits. My experiences on other internet wikis has led me to be fairly positive on how things like categories and their entries are self-correcting, when the rules are clearly posted in a form most users cannot change. If this optimism has proven to be unwarranted on this wiki, I'd like to know how.

In any case, it's still the mods' wiki and they can do what they believe is justified. I wanted to make a case for a new category for PDWs, but if they want to remove it, it's their call and I can let this one go, so as long as they apply the new policies evenly across the board, such as removing "Personal Defense Weapon" from the descriptions of compact carbines using battle rifle or assault rifle ammunition, or reclassifying the FN P90, HK MP7, KAC PDW, et. al as "armour-piercing SMGs).

And why the pessimism of there being "so few PDWs" presently? The jury's still out on whether or not the concept will take off, and if it does, we can expect to see more of them using the criteria I developed.

It's funny you should mention that, actually: I tried to look up the references they cite, the "Smalls Arms Strategy 2000" document from 1986, "which defines the APDW (Advanced Personal Defense Weapon)." What I found was the only occurrances of this document on the internet are...Sites mirroring Wikipedia's PDW page. Nobody seems to know what it defines the "APDW" as, and it seems the arms industry doesn't really know either. Weird, given you can usually find any publication that isn't massive on scribd (ie anything other than giant helicopter tech manuals that cost $70 a throw) and globalsecurity tends to host things like that if you can hit the stop button before it redirects you. Globalsecurity even has that wonderful US Army urban combat manual where they built the example images in Simcity 3000.

Yes, but did you know that before you checked? Had you ever read them to see if there's some rules there you needed to know?

Yeah, the thing is "fires a pistol round" is part of a very solid and agreed-on definition which was made when submachine guns were first adopted (originally to differentiate them from machine guns, which fired a rifle round). There are a handful of cases of manufacturers not sticking to the "classic" weapon classes (another would be Rocky Mountain Arms with their 5.56mm "pistol" that happened to look exactly like an AR-15 with a really short barrel), while there are thousands of weapons made precisely in line with these classes. For everything that's not quite an SMG, you can rattle off a list of thirty things that fit the classic definition exactly.

This is in no way the same as a class of weapons the industry has no clear definition for and where you are proposing a meaning where I believe roughly than 80% of weapons called PDWs will not actually be such. As MT2008 commented, it isn't worth all the potential confusion just to keep a category around which will currently only have about half a dozen guns in it anyway.

That's the heart of the problem: there is no single, clear definition of what a PDW is within the arms industry, other than "a marketing gimmick name for various smallarms." Us making one up won't solve that issue, it'll just mean there's yet another definition of it floating around confusing people. I know there are some other contentious sub-classes out there (do battle rifles have to be select-fire, when does a machine pistol become a subgun, etc), but none where you'd actually say most weapons said to be in the class are not.

Oh come on, the concept's been lurking around since the eighties and we've had, according to your definition, about six of them. This puts them into roughly the same bracket of success as semi-automatic revolvers and sustained pressure pumps.

The AR pistol you mention is merely classified as a pistol because of build compliance for American law. It's simpler to sell a gun built to "pistol" specifications according to our specific law set than to build an SBR for sale. I'm just saying that's a poor example of stepping out of weapon classification because there are legal matters in the mix there.

Additionally the qualifications for submachineguns as they were dictated during their inception were, more or less, the gun being a handheld portable automatic weapon, the pistol caliber being partially necessary criteria for definition and partially a necessity due to the build of the early open bolt subguns like the Thompson.

However certain concepts have been around for long enough to where there are a few broad definitions which I think the vast majority of people agree on:

Battle rifle: Any rifle firing a full powered cartridge (7.62x51mm for example).

Assault Rifle: Any rifle firing an intermediate cartridge (5.56mm for example).

Submachinegun: Any handheld automatic weapon firing a pistol caliber catridge (9mm for example).

The PDW hasn't been around as long and with the broadness of the accepted definition of submachineguns, it's hard to separate PDW from SMG. I personally thought that PDWs by definition had to fire a proprietary cartridge capable of better penetration (basically just the P90 and MP7) to be considered a PDW, and that anything else is NOT a PDW, just simply an SMG which may be falsely marketed as a PDW, as you all have said.

As for what Matt said with the role of the round not distinguishing its class, I don't believe that either, because that's about what the difference is between a Battle Rifle, Assault Rifle and SMG are, and so I'd say:

1: If you are going to keep the PDW classification, make the criteria fit with weapons like SMGs that fire a proprietary, non-intermediate round that is more fit for armor penetration and better range, basically just the P90 and MP7 which are as far as I know the only guns that fall into that. Everything else in typical calibers are SMGs, even if marketed as PDWs, plain and simple.

1: Get rid of it altogether and just call the P90 and MP7 SMGs, because they still fall under that criteria as well if you consider 5.7 and 4.6 "pistol" rounds, as they technically are chambered in pistols and aren't powerful enough to be intermediate rounds.

Well, it was much simpler: it was World War 1, and there was a hard divide between handgun and rifle bullets which wouldn't really go away until 1938 when the 7.93x33mm Kurz was designed. The sub-machine gun (which is how the term was originally formed) was an even-lighter-than-light machine gun firing a handgun bullet rather than a rifle bullet.

In my experience, "battle rifle" is a subset of "rifle" which refers specifically to assault-like rifles that fire full-sized rifle bullets (ie FAL, G3, M14) and have at least a select-fire variant, otherwise it's hard to draw a line between a battle rifle and a DMR. If I remember rightly, the term is actually fairly new, and was coined in the Vietnam era to provide a distinction between the M14 "battle rifle" and the new M16 "assault rifle."

I believe what he means is that what the ammo is for doesn't change the class of the gun. So, for example, loading your M1911 with FMJs instead of hollowpoints doesn't change it from a "light attack pistol" into a "heavy duty pistol" (unless you live inside a videogame, in which case it probably does). Same here, putting AP rounds into what's basically a subgun doesn't really change that it's a subgun, it just addresses why subgun sales started to fall off in favour of compact carbines (the increasing likelihood of encountering bad guys in body armour and the relative crapness of the traditional 9x19mm subgun round against such) so companies could try to lure back their old SMG clients.

5.7x28mm was designed specifically with the P90 in mind, the Five-seveN pistol came along after. Likewise, the 4.6x30mm was designed specifically with the MP7 in mind, but in this case HK's companion pistol, the UCP, never materialized outside of limited trials with the Bundeswehr.

You're not telling me anything that I don't know (or didn't already demonstrate that I knew in my previous posts). I am well aware that the P90 and MP7 are intended to fit assault rifles' penetration capabilities into a compact package; you didn't need to write an editorial-length post explaining the differences between PDWs and conventional submachine guns. What you still keep failing to ask yourself is why this ability makes them distinctive enough to deserve an entire category. Contrary to manufacturers' hype (which you seem to be buying into), the fact that PDWs fire such ammunition does not make them revolutionary enough to warrant an entire class of firearms unto themselves.

Also, since the G11 example obviously failed to make my case, let me try this one instead: Think about the evolution of the revolver. First, revolvers evolved from black powder designs into cartridge designs, and then from single-action to double-action. Compared to the submachine gun/PDW distinction, those are some major changes, right? Yet IMFDB still classifies them all as simply "revolvers" - we don't even have sub-categories for "black powder revolver" and "cartridge revolver", or "single-action revolver" and "double-action revolver". Or maybe you think we should do that, too?

But anyway, separating PDWs (which represent a comparatively minor trend in firearm history) from SMGs would be almost as ridiculous as insisting that we come up with three new categories for revolvers. If you wish to argue for that, too, then be my guest.

Um, making incorrect edits is hardly grounds for banning by itself.

Right, but you are trying to add more rules and make things more complicated than they need to be (for the purposes of our site).

Which is what we're going to do, though I don't think it's an illegitimate debate to consider the value of a PDW category.

As Tim pointed out, PDWs have been around for a while now; the P90's name comes from the year of its introduction - 1990 - which means that it's been around longer than most IMFDB users have been alive. Since that time, it has been compact 5.56mm carbines - not PDWs - that replaced 9mm SMGs in most tactical teams' inventories. Based on this hindsight, I think we can say with certainty in 2011 that the PDW represents a minor trend in firearms that is unworthy of its own special and distinct category.

That's hilarious. I think it also goes to show why you can't always take the industry's own classification seriously. Indeed, I think Mazryonh himself demonstrated this when he pointed out that Colt described their Model 607 as a "submachine gun" (which is also how Daewoo describes the K1/K1A). In the case of PDWs, manufacturers have every reason to try and promote their weapons as some special and revolutionary new class of firearms, even though they're hardly worthy of such hype.

I think this by itself is a good rule of thumb when we're deciding whether or not to create a new firearms category: If there are THAT few, it probably doesn't constitute a whole new class of small arms requiring their own category.

In all fairness to Mazryonh, PDW doesn't seem as absurd a category to include as some of the others we seem to have. I had no idea, for instance, that someone made a category for "Multiple Barrel Firearm" and another for "Machine Revolver". Those should go, IMO. A lot of these unnecessary categories can be blamed on Cutaway (someone else who seems to have an obsession with making IMFDB into a firearms Wiki rather than a movie guns Wiki).

I'm going to yank "machine revolver" right now, I've encountered it elsewhere and it doesn't make any sense as a category: you'd never describe a Mateba or Webley-Fosberry as a "machine" anything, because they're semi-autos.

Could you nuke the category, MT? Also, can you nuke "Welrod Pistol?" Ben41 accidentally moved "Welrod pistol" to "Welrod Istol" and created a redirect on "Welrod Pistol" that prevents the article being moved there.

Sure thing. First I gotta also remove it from the pages it's on, though.

I don't so much mind having a cat for multiple barrel firearms of a certain type (rotary guns) since it makes it quicker to check through them all and it's a logical group, but I'd agree that the previous name was too broad; nobody really needs to look at all types of multi-barrel weapon to see if this minigun-looking thing they saw might actually be a double-barrel shotgun.

Took a look at the rest of the firearms categories. Most of them seem fine to me. There are a couple I'm curious about though, and since we're on it, let's discuss them:

*UBGL (Under Barrel Grenade Launcher): Not sure if we really need this when we already have "Grenade Launcher".
*Underwater Firearm: Right now, it's just the H&K P11.

Should I ditch these, too?

Underwater firearm seems pretty useless since there's only a handful in total, mostly either obscure prototypes or equally obscure Russian special-issue weapons; Wikipedia lists eight including the cancelled Lancejet and AAI's underwater revolver than never got past prototype. They don't tend to appear in anything since Hollywood has a strong preference for spearguns, and I really can't see the use of a category with only one gun in it.

UGBL is potentially useful. The way I use categories for guns, if I see a weapon I don't recognise I'll click around the entries in the cat looking at the page images before searching offsite. Obviously, if I'm looking at an underbarrel launcher I'm not likely to want to search through a list full of standalones.

Also, this still needs killing:

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Welrod_Pistol

True, but I just feel that the list of grenade launchers is short enough that this isn't a problem. This seems almost as unnecessary to me as the PDW category, even if there are way more UBGLs than PDWs.

Done. Thought I did it before, but I got logged out accidentally and prevented from making the change, but somehow didn't notice (blame it on multitasking and 'Net-induced ADD).

Also, for now, I'm leaving the PDW category up, but I am still leaning towards removing it.

22 GLs, 12 underbarrel launchers. I'd say that's a reasonable enough size for a sub-category, and it is useful to have since there are a lot of imitation underbarrel launchers floating around. Though it does strike me as a little counter-productive to put UBGL and Grenade Launcher cats on each entry, rather than having UBGL entries on their own sub-page.

I think the fundamental question for any gun category looking to justify its existence is "will this help people search for weapons that look similar?"

Though I have removed the UBGL cat from less-lethal firearm, because it doesn't make any sense at all for that to be listed as a subclass of the UBGL category.

When you put it that way, I guess it's not all bad. Bearing in mind that the purpose of this site is to identify guns in media (an endeavor that is based upon visual perception), I suppose grouping weapons by similar appearance isn't a bad way to go. Plus, we also have categories such as "bullpup", which serve the same purpose.

Just to explain further, this is the heading text to Category:UBGL:

Now, the way I see it, we shouldn't add Category:Grenade Launcher to these; rather, they should only be on Category:UGBL, which is a sub-page of Category:Grenade Launcher. That way we have one list for underbarrel launchers which is a sub-category of the main one, and a main list of everything that isn't in the sub-category.

The current setup would be like if Category:Cat was a sub-list of Category:Feline, but there was no list of only felines that weren't cats. Fine if you want to find a housecat, not so useful if you're left sifting through housecats trying to find a type of lion.

If I may, one way to solve a potential category problem between Machine Pistols that could qualify as Compact Submachine Guns (and therefore inclusion into the "Submachine Gun" category) is to post a quick rule that could clarify this problem. The classic MAC-10 and Skorpion, for instance, have been called both a submachine gun and a machine pistol at different times. A solution to this fuzzy area would be to posit that a true submachine gun has both a buttstock and a dedicated space to put your offhand out of the box--without both these features, the MAC-10, the MP5K, the TEC-9, etc. are machine pistols.

Of course, if you decided to buy an elongated upper receiver that includes a vertical foregrip mounting point for your MAC-10, then you could call it a full-fledged submachine gun. I'm driven to wonder if the finished product could compete with its more modern cousin the HK UMP45.

(Does anyone else feel that this discussion about categories in general be split into a new thread?)

No, but I did happen to read the definition of Assault Rifles and Battle Rifles on wikipedia before versions of those defining features were posted on this wiki. In any case, when someone drafts up a comprehensive "how to edit or create new pages" guide on this site, there should definitely be a reference to how "when you look to add a firearm to the various categories, please consult the defining features of that category before adding it."

No, I don't believe that revolvers should be split into old forms and new forms (though I think there could be a supercategory for "Black Powder Firearms" that could be useful for someone who quickly wanted to find firearms that were made and used before the smokeless powder revolution). However, revolvers have not changed their role since they were introduced, that being very short-range defense, and in a pinch, offense at that range. Submachine guns have changed from being very mobile support weapons for slower-firing battle rifles in WWII, to being relegated to police or special forces work in modern times due to the rise of body armour and assault rifles amongst modern militaries. The PDW in this sense is supposed to update the submachine concept by virtue of its new rounds, and would fulfill that CQB role now more effectively against targets wearing body armour proof against pistol rounds.

I don't see what you meant when you said that I "bought into the hype." I would think that purely on the basis of their shorter cases and lighter bullets, PDW rounds give less muzzle flash/blast and less recoil than most 5.56mm carbines would. Isn't that simply a function of the physics behind the firearms in question? I didn't say anything like "second-line personnel in First-World armies should ditch their 5.56mm ultracompact carbines for FN P90s" or the like. The costs for PDW guns and ammunition could easily come down if more competition was introduced as well.

I was under the impression that we might introduce "privilege levels" for users on the wiki. For example, the forum currently distinguishes between "Senior," "Junior," and other levels of members right now, but doesn't award differing levels of posting privileges. A site like GameFAQs does, however--users gain "Karma" points by posting or contributing within the rules, and gain a bigger post limit the more karma points they accrue. A similar system governing the number of edits or picture contributions could help to cut the unwanted "noise" by unscrupulous users, such as limiting the amount of edits to pages they can make, followed by (temporary) revocation of such privileges if they prove undeserving.

In any case, I'd like a verdict soon on this. I'm glad we've had a civil discussion about this so far, but I'd like to know if we're going to live and let live for this category, or euthanize it.

Um, I've never heard the MP5K called a machine pistol before. Machine pistol is another one with no fixed definition since every standard definition has something that doesn't qualify when it should or should when it doesn't. Really it's only a useful term to describe fullauto versions of existing pistol designs, as soon as you start using it to describe things like MACs and TECs you enter a world of headachery.

Realistically speaking such a system solves a problem we don't really have. We're a pretty close-knit group, we all know who everyone is without needing a little icon to tell us, and newbies shouldn't take that long to learn the ropes if they keep their eyes and ears open. People who want to cause trouble will cause trouble under any system, and we have a good group of people who watch the recent changes for that kind of thing as it is.

The key word here is update the submachine gun concept. "Updating" does not mean some fundamental re-definition of the role. The P90 and its ilk were meant to fulfill the exact same role as 9mm submachine guns (close-quarters battle), except with an improvement in capabilities. This is, as I have argued repeatedly, not an ability that is worthy of constituting an entire new class of firearms. Especially since PDWs haven't caught on with either law enforcement or military. And that's why I don't want them to have a new category unto themselves.

Also, a discussion of how SMGs' role has changed since WWII is completely irrelevant to the SMG/PDW distinction. I have no idea what the hell you're on about.

It's simple: Manufacturers have promoted the PDW as some revolutionary new class of firearms that are so innovative that they don't deserve to be called mere "submachine guns". You seem to agree.

And please do not give me another response where you quote all sorts of ballistic info and stuff. I'm getting a little tired of hearing it. It's not relevant.

Wow, you do love to make life complicated, don't you? :rolleyes: Bro, we're not GameFAQs; we're a Wiki (and they're not, last I checked).

It's simple: The PDW category is going. End of discussion.