Issue with "PDW" as a weapon category

[Evil Tim]

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.

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

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.

[Evil Tim]

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.

[MT2008]

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?

[Evil Tim]

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

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

Also, this still needs killing:

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

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.

[Evil Tim]

Originally Posted by MT2008

True, but I just feel that the list of grenade launchers is short enough that this isn't a problem.

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.