Time for new subcategories in the "War" entries?
 

Being one of the larger categories on this site, would it be easier to navigate if media involving war were divided into two main subcategories, "Historical" and "Fictional"? The former would cover actual wars that happened in history, and, if you want, could be even further divided into sub-sub-categories containing individual conflicts in history (such as World War 2, the Vietnam War, etc.). The "Fictional War" subcategory would simply cover fictional wars that are written simply for setting the conflict in the story with no basis in reality (though some sub-genres like "Alien Invasion/Contact" might merit another sub-sub-category of its own).

Right now the "War" category seems to cover so many conflicts (fictional and historical) across so many forms of media that it seems more tacked on than anything. I would personally prefer the "War" category to distinguish more between a serious war movie like Saving Private Ryan and a fanservice-oriented Alien Invasion anime like Strike Witches, both of which belong to that category right now.

Those two subcategories would be fine with me (though as always, I caution you that I alone can't make the decision).

And while we're at it, could there be a category for videogame developers?
Like IO Interactive, since all but one of their games has a page one here. I just think it would be a good idea.

Don't see why not; we already have special pages for certain directors with plenty of films that have entries on this site.

Categories for firearm manufacturers? I'd be nice to just hammer in "Heckler & Koch" and get to a category instead of having to look through the search results. A matter of preference, really.

What about movies like Tears of the Sun with fictional conflicts set firmly in the real world? Where would they belong?

No to both these. Sub-categories are meant to relate to the subject matter of the media in question...not who's in it, who worked on it, etc.

Also, the director pages are not the same thing as categories. But personally, I was never in favor of them.

No. Resist the temptation to create a landslide of endless new sub-categories. In fact I agree that the director category is rather useless on this site. Initially it made sense when we were curious as to how many 'gun' movies certain action directors made, but then there are so many general DIRECTORS who are not action or cop movie or thriller or war movie style directors who just happen to have guns in their movies. For one I could care less about how many Stephen Soderbergh movies have guns in them because I know that Soderbergh is not a 'gun' director. Milius is a gun enthusiast, fine, but then Cameron or Bay are good at action sequences, but they truly don't give a rat's ass about guns.

I had this argument with new members a while ago and it always sticks its head up again , like the proverbial Hydra.

One thing I DO recommend is that we clarify the genres. We need to separate the various media in each category. For instance, if I'm looking for how many Zombie movies are listed, I type in zombie, I get ALL ZOMBIE related stuff, video games, anime, TV shows, etc. It renders the search useless.

Now if we have 'zombie movie' just like action movie, crime movie, thriller movie as well as 'zombie anime' or zombie Video game' or zombie Television show / Crime movie, Crime Anime, Crime Video Game, Crime Television show etc. I support that.

I have no problem discussing new sub-categories (won't necessarily agree with them, but I am willing to talk about them), but ONLY if they are related to the subject of the movie. That is how categorization works.

This is frustrating to me, too. We need to have a category search function similar to IMDB (where you can select keywords in sequence to narrow down a search). Come to think of it, if we could do something like this, it might obviate the need for sub-categories all together. After all, we wouldn't need "Historical" and "Fictional" subcategories for war if someone could search for "War" and "Science-Fiction" simultaneously.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure this type of system have that for Wikis, and most Wikis are nothing like IMFDB, anyway.

Not that this is a democracy but I vote no.