[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

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.

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

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

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.

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).

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

In any case, it's still the mods' wiki and they can do what they believe is justified.

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.

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

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.

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.