[Mazryonh]

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

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

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).

Originally Posted by MT2008

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"?)

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.

Originally Posted by MT2008

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.

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.