Just running this by you guys; do we want gun names/models/designations as tags?

I mean, we have things like post #183619 where the gun is pretty obviously a Beretta handgun, but if we use a tag for it do we call it a Beretta M92? Or do we go with the U.S. military designation of simply M9? I suppose we could alias one to the other.

Then there's stuff like post #183111. Is it an AK-47? Type 96? Zastava M70?

What about fictional guns? Games like Mass Effect and Fallout have their own weapons with specific names, but should we bother to use them as tags here?

I think we should have tags for classes of guns, and maybe a few of the well-known models that appear frequently in art. My proposition comes in 3 levels of categorization; discuss which ones (if any) you'd like to implement and any changes you'd like to make to them.
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1) gun becomes a metatag for specific types of guns.

pistol
revolver
rifle
machine_gun
shotgun
cannon

All of these would imply gun.

Notes: I think this system is something most people can agree on.

These tags are general. If it looks like a rifle then it gets tagged rifle; that means no specific tags for assault rifles, battle rifles, hunting rifles, carbines or whatever.
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2) Well-known models of guns are tagged with their most common name.

Notes: This one I'm iffy on; I'd like to see it in place but I do realize it may be out of the focus of the site. I will argue that we do have tags like ford and chevrolet for cars.

These tags would also be general to a certain degree. For example this would simply be tagged "colt_M4." That means no M4, M4A1, barret_M468, cqbr, or anything else; just colt_M4.
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3) Fictional guns would be tagged with their respective names when applicable.

For example, this image would be tagged tempest_(mass_effect), and this image would be tagged R91.

Notes: This one is the least useful in my mind, and I can see it getting little support.
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Also keep in mind that these systems are designed to be additive. So if we implement systems 1 and 2, this image would get both the rifle tag from system 1, and the ak-47 tag from system 2.

Although ideally, ak-47 should imply rifle (same goes for the Colt M4, Tempest, R91, and any other guns, fictional or otherwise.) But I imagine making implications correlating every model of weapon to its type would be a lot of possibly unnecessary work.

Start talking.

Methinks 1 is the only one that's really worth it. No one's going to do a tag search for a specific make/model/etc. of gun.

*Raises hands* Don't shoot

Test-Subject_217601 said:
Methinks 1 is the only one that's really worth it. No one's going to do a tag search for a specific make/model/etc. of gun.

That's why I wanted to ask here. I talked to another user on IRC and we both would appreciate somewhat specific weapon tags.

The implications were just a point of wishful thinking on my part, I know the mods probably aren't going to care enough about the subject to go through the trouble (which would be a lot, so I don't blame them.)

I'd be fine with sorting out weapon name tags on the user level.

slyroon said:
*Raises hands* Don't shoot

I said:
Start talking.

I was gonna ask about this, at least you could put specific weapons like "revolver" or "Shotgun" instead of ranged_weapon which could apply from anything to a dick that shoots lasers to a crossbow.

I think 1 is good enough, considering most of it is already in effect.

ippiki_ookami said:
I think 1 is good enough, considering most of it is already in effect.

That and anything more complicated would start fights in the comments, the gun people are kinda odd like that

I'm ok with 1, as long as we keep it to that, and don't start getting into "well is it a rifle, or is it a carbine? It's not a machine gun, it's an assault rifle! No no, that one's a sub-machine gun, jesus guys, get your shit straight" Shit like that. Because it will happen.

I just don't see any practical reason or strong need to add the various weapon types, as the number of images with guns is very low (like 1% of total pics); and there is really no specific reason to have it for black-listing reasons -- or even searching reasons.

And as noted above, people WILL bitch between a rifle/assault rifle/SMG.

CamKitty said:
...anything more complicated would start fights in the comments, the gun people are kinda odd like that

RedOctober said:
Shit like that.

That's what I'm worried about.

When those fights crop up I want to be able to call on some precedent to end it.

Murmillos said:
I just don't see any practical reason or strong need to add the various weapon types, as the number of images with guns is very low (like 1% of total pics); and there is really no specific reason to have it for black-listing reasons -- or even searching reasons.

And as noted above, people WILL bitch between a rifle/assault rifle/SMG.

And any part of them.
"Suppressor" vs "Silencer."

Actini said:
And any part of them.
"Suppressor" vs "Silencer."

So then do you want these tags gone, one or the other or aliased?

I think it's best to remember K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). I think 1) is adequate as a basic level for the general user.

Most of the time, I think 2) would be overkill and should be left as it is now. If any viewers are interested in tagging a specific gun, they can do it themselves and, as you suggest, should keep it general enough so that the rest of us can understand what the tag refers to, much like how they would want others to tag stuff they're not terribly interested in.

3) should be more like 1) than 2). We're even less likely to care about specific models or makes of fictional weapons. Tags like laser_pistol, phaser, disruptor, or even blaster are a lot more understandable and should be encouraged over something like Hyperswyne Industries Sporkulator Type 2 Mark 12.

As a general rule of thumb, when users start arguing about types of something like a gun or pieces thereof, the thing being argued about is over-specific and unnecessary.

Two things.:
"Tag what you see".
iPod dilemma.

Anyway, I would say we keep it as it is, and if sb wants to know the type of gun, he may ask in the comments, maybe the mymail feature'd be used a bit more, too, that way.

I'd have it like that for all brands of any product. This site isn't a gun/car/furniture exhibit!

Necro for a question:

for something like . . .

post #160590

was it decided that generic stuff like pistol, rifle, etc were to be used? Are specific gun tags wanted or should there be a bit of clean up?

bump?

Going by the proliferation of generic weapon type tags over specifics, I'd say that it should be cleaned up to the generics instead of specifics.

KloH0und said:
Just running this by you guys; do we want gun names/models/designations as tags?

Seeing as tags like yellow_eyes or blue_hair are searched for at least as rarely as the ak-47 tag, but are still added, I'm still not convinced specific weapon model tags shouldn't exist.
Who the heck searches for ranged_weapon, anyway? Isn't that like having a mammal or vertebrate tag?

Cynically speaking, what that probably means is that the admins are in favor of keeping the purple_eyes tag and getting rid of the ak-47 tag.

Edit: the mammal tag now exists. God dammit.

DSR1337 said:
Seeing as tags like yellow_eyes or blue_hair are searched for at least as rarely as the ak-47 tag, but are still added, I'm still not convinced specific weapon model tags shouldn't exist.
Who the heck searches for ranged_weapon, anyway? Isn't that like having a mammal or vertebrate tag?

Cynically speaking, what that probably means is that the admins are in favor of keeping the purple_eyes tag and getting rid of the ak-47 tag.

Eyes are a very distinctive feature of a person. What gun they have is not important, though whether they have a gun, and what general type of gun, is. We don't need to know if it's a Mauser or a LeMat Revolver or a Beretta 9MM- that's for gun nuts to deal with. What does matter is that it's a handgun, which follows a basic form- but when you boil it all down there are infinite varieties of gun names, fictional or real, and having a thousand one or two image tags compared to the much simpler and strict-yet-open format? The latter is superior. Not to mention reduction of tags to prevent tag bloat.

Feel free to name the specific gun in the description of the image, though!

123easy said:
Going by the proliferation of generic weapon type tags over specifics, I'd say that it should be cleaned up to the generics instead of specifics.

123easy said:
Eyes are a very distinctive feature of a person. What gun they have is not important, though whether they have a gun, and what general type of gun, is. We don't need to know if it's a Mauser or a LeMat Revolver or a Beretta 9MM- that's for gun nuts to deal with. What does matter is that it's a handgun, which follows a basic form- but when you boil it all down there are infinite varieties of gun names, fictional or real, and having a thousand one or two image tags compared to the much simpler and strict-yet-open format? The latter is superior. Not to mention reduction of tags to prevent tag bloat.

Feel free to name the specific gun in the description of the image, though!

That would be nice, except... how do I search for an M16, Dragunov, or RPG launcher?
Let's compare to the tagging guidelines for dog breed (yes, I am aware that identifying types of dogs is more significant than gun models, especially in terms of post count). If a specific breed, then the tag is added. If even the species is vague, then just the "canine" tag is used. We don't have an insistence on sticking to the generic dog tag in all cases just to avoid edit wars over identifying golden retrievers vs yellow labs, for example. People who don't know dog breeds very well just stay out of the discussion.
It seems to me like if the model is indeterminate enough for an edit war to occur, sticking to the generic works better than just throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
And Kloh0und is right that variants of a weapon model, such as M16A3 in addition to M16 or Type_56 or AKM in addition to ak-47 should be avoided. With that said, a Dragunov, Barrett or Luger is pretty distinct-looking.

DSR1337 said:
So how do I search for an M16, Dragunov, or RPG launcher?

rifle, rifle/sniper_rifle, rocket_launcher, then sift. We're a furry site, not a gun site, as I said.

The problem with the word, "Gun," is that there is the offchance that some traditionalist will come around and expose the fact that a "gun" is considered a field artillery piece in the Military, while a "Rifle" is what one soldier carries.

In this respect, "Firearm" would be a better term as not all, "Firearms" are guns in the end. They include Motar pieces, etc.

In reply to DSR1337:
As far as looking for specific, distinct firearms goes.. The issue we have here is that Battlefield 4 and CoD series introduce new firearms that are awesome and cool to people who would have never thought about them before. Just recently, I've noticed an explosion in interest in the SCAR series of rifles, along with the 805 BREN's and SAR-21s because of Battlefield 4. Those are all very easily identifiable now these days, and add to the pool of weapons that CoD kids know on sight really.

Either which way, if a fight does come up over the use of firearms in a picture and how they should be used, I will probably address it myself with something that could work out well. I'm quite a firearms enthusiast myself, as well, so I would hate to see a drama break out over them for no reason you know?

Here is how I suggest we do this and why, I am open to feedback so don't be shy to stand up and say it sucks.

Weapons are tagged, then ranged_weapon (could honestly do without because nearly anything that can be thrown can be a ranged weapon, either way wiki needs more beefing up)

Then we tag gun to distinguish it from bows and harpoons, etc

Then we tag the basic groups of guns
Rifles, sniper rifles, pistols, revolver, shotguns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, miniguns, cannons, that_one_gun_that_shoots_salt_at_flies (kidding), orbital cannon (not kidding) and sometimes a few other guns that are just so unique that they need a separate tag I'm thinking this would be sci-fi weaponry)
I can make these definitions very clear on the wiki if needed (in terms of how we are going to tag them)

The reason we do not break it down further is this:
1) Tag wars
People just RAGE and RAGE over exactly what kind of gun it is, and when it's a fictional rendition of one, small details that might distinguish exactly what kind of gun it is might be missing or incorrect, which would just wreak havoc on our tags, whereas yellow eyes, will always be yellow eyes and there is little to debate
2) See point 1
3) We are not sacrificing tag searchability by limiting the specifics because guns are far and few in uploads and finding a dragunov would be as easy as searching sniper_rifle and sifting rifling through a few posts, however I have a suggestion to improve that (I'll get to that)

I could make a list of a few of the really famous weapon families, alias all the variants to it and have it implicate it's type

Also firearm is going to be aliased to gun, as it's really getting too technical for our tagging standards, and this list truly is for all guns (artillery included)

Honestly I find the distinction between weapon and ranged weapon irrelevant, and think it should just be 'weapon', since it's more like a classification metatag than an actual tag in and of itself.

The classifications of types of guns you have listed make sense to me and are to my knowledge what was agreed to use above and by common sense.

Though, as Dasa said, using firearm instead of gun would be the more correct term, what about the more encompassing term military_ordnance that actually does cover SALW (small arms and light weapons) as well as artillery, grenades, sci-fi weaponry, and the like? the term 'modern' could substitute for 'military', though that might cause a disconnect with sci-fi/futuristic tech weapons that don't actually qualify as firearms because they don't utilize any form of explosive propellant as the definition requires.

123easy said:
Honestly I find the distinction between weapon and ranged weapon irrelevant, and think it should just be 'weapon', since it's more like a classification metatag than an actual tag in and of itself.

The classifications of types of guns you have listed make sense to me and are to my knowledge what was agreed to use above and by common sense.

Though, as Dasa said, using firearm instead of gun would be the more correct term, what about the more encompassing term military_ordnance that actually does cover SALW (small arms and light weapons) as well as artillery, grenades, sci-fi weaponry, and the like? the term 'modern' could substitute for 'military', though that might cause a disconnect with sci-fi/futuristic tech weapons that don't actually qualify as firearms because they don't utilize any form of explosive propellant as the definition requires.

I think I might alias in ranged weapon, because as I said before that covers almost anything, like if it can be thrown or expel shrapnel, it is considered a "ranged weapon", and I am probably going to alias firearm to gun, because as I said before also, this list includes big, traditional guns, such as cannons, and firearm is too specific a term to encompass that, and I don't think we need it to distinguish shooty weapons further

Rainbow_Dash said:
I think I might alias in ranged weapon, because as I said before that covers almost anything, like if it can be thrown or expel shrapnel, it is considered a "ranged weapon", and I am probably going to alias firearm to gun, because as I said before also, this list includes big, traditional guns, such as cannons, and firearm is too specific a term to encompass that, and I don't think we need it to distinguish shooty weapons further

Actually, artillery pieces are explicitly covered under firearms, since firearms doesn't just cover man-portable small arms and crew-operated weapons. Sci-fi weaponry modelled on the visuals of guns however is not. 'gun' also does not handle sci-fi weaponry unless they utilize the same process, and it also does not encompass rocket launchers or cannon or any of the other more broader catagories of military weaponry. This is why I made the suggestion for military_ordnance to replace it because it covers anything and everything to do with weaponry like this, while also not excluding futuristic or steampunk-tech type weapons that would otherwise not actually qualify for being a gun- and it is a more neutral term as well, since it doesn't imply the weapon requires an explosive propellant or anything of the sort, only that it is or was used in a military role, which simply means being in use in an armed force (technically, even paramilitary usage counts, such as by militia, or for a sci-fi reference, Cerberus from Mass Effect).

Literally anything can be a ranged weapon, which is why I don't see a reason to differentiate it from 'weapon'. yes, we have weapons primarily utilized at range, such as boomerangs, but in the same breath they can be used in melee as well. Trying to define them based on primary usage just seems like an exercise in futility, especially since we just simply don't have that many weapons to begin with.

Rainbow_Dash said:
Here is how I suggest we do this and why, I am open to feedback so don't be shy to stand up and say it sucks.

Weapons are tagged, then ranged_weapon (could honestly do without because nearly anything that can be thrown can be a ranged weapon, either way wiki needs more beefing up)

Then we tag gun to distinguish it from bows and harpoons, etc

Then we tag the basic groups of guns
Rifles, sniper rifles, pistols, revolver, shotguns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, miniguns, cannons, that_one_gun_that_shoots_salt_at_flies (kidding), orbital cannon (not kidding) and sometimes a few other guns that are just so unique that they need a separate tag I'm thinking this would be sci-fi weaponry)
I can make these definitions very clear on the wiki if needed (in terms of how we are going to tag them)

So far, so good.

Rainbow_Dash said:
The reason we do not break it down further is this:
1) Tag wars
People just RAGE and RAGE over exactly what kind of gun it is, and when it's a fictional rendition of one, small details that might distinguish exactly what kind of gun it is might be missing or incorrect, which would just wreak havoc on our tags, whereas yellow eyes, will always be yellow eyes and there is little to debate
2) See point 1
3) We are not sacrificing tag searchability by limiting the specifics because guns are far and few in uploads and finding a dragunov would be as easy as searching sniper_rifle and sifting rifling through a few posts, however I have a suggestion to improve that (I'll get to that)

I could make a list of a few of the really famous weapon families, alias all the variants to it and have it implicate it's type

Also firearm is going to be aliased to gun, as it's really getting too technical for our tagging standards, and this list truly is for all guns (artillery included)

Yes, that sucks. My intuition about the admins was correct.
If there's only a small number of posts with guns, then it's unlikely there will be much of a tag war. I think fears of this are overstated. By that I mean I don't see the reason for removing the "Dragunov" or "ak-47" tag because "there will be a tag war"--if that's the case, why aren't there wars already when I tag a weapon model?
I didn't clarify this earlier, but if a specific model is seen, tagging it should always be optional, not mandatory, so people who aren't firearms nerds don't have to worry about it.
I should never have started a fucking thread about gun tags. If I hadn't brought it up, I could tag Barretts in peace and people would leave it alone, instead of more bullshit rules being created.

Speaking of sifting, what about more numerically significant things like clarifying whether, for a given language such as japanese, japanese or japanese_text is the correct text tag to use? There seems to be a lot of confusion there.

tl;dr This sucks. If you don't care about guns don't worry about the gun tags, leave it to someone else. People can add the model if they want to but it is not necessary. Kloh0und is right. 123easy is wrong. (love you anyway)

123easy said:
Literally anything can be a ranged weapon, which is why I don't see a reason to differentiate it from 'weapon'. yes, we have weapons primarily utilized at range, such as boomerangs, but in the same breath they can be used in melee as well. Trying to define them based on primary usage just seems like an exercise in futility...

Resolved: that ranged_weapon is a bullshit tag.
Same goes for the "mammal" tag, in my opinion, unless we are also going to have a cartilagenous_fish tag for sharks and manta rays. If being evolutionarily accurate is critical, we should replace the "canine" tag with "canid", since "vulpine" applies to red pandas, foxes, and fennecs and "canine" applies to wolves, dogs, coyotes, etc. Seems like that would be more important in terms of correctness than giving a mammal tag. Theoretically, that in itself might start edit wars over hybrids that are mostly scalie and look like they have some canine/feline/etc. admixture.

Take your sanctimonious attitude and shove it. plzkthxbye. I'm done with this conversation the moment you state an opinion is wrong.

Both of you, knock it off. Be civil, or don't post.

123easy said:
Actually, artillery pieces are explicitly covered under firearms, since firearms doesn't just cover man-portable small arms and crew-operated weapons. Sci-fi weaponry modelled on the visuals of guns however is not. 'gun' also does not handle sci-fi weaponry unless they utilize the same process, and it also does not encompass rocket launchers or cannon or any of the other more broader catagories of military weaponry. This is why I made the suggestion for military_ordnance to replace it because it covers anything and everything to do with weaponry like this, while also not excluding futuristic or steampunk-tech type weapons that would otherwise not actually qualify for being a gun- and it is a more neutral term as well, since it doesn't imply the weapon requires an explosive propellant or anything of the sort, only that it is or was used in a military role, which simply means being in use in an armed force (technically, even paramilitary usage counts, such as by militia, or for a sci-fi reference, Cerberus from Mass Effect).

Literally anything can be a ranged weapon, which is why I don't see a reason to differentiate it from 'weapon'. yes, we have weapons primarily utilized at range, such as boomerangs, but in the same breath they can be used in melee as well. Trying to define them based on primary usage just seems like an exercise in futility, especially since we just simply don't have that many weapons to begin with.

I was saying that I would alias ranged_weapon to weapon, because ranged_weapon covers most weapons except for a few, and that can be argued as to weather a throwing axe is considered a ranged weapon, which is why I think it'd just be easier to have it all under weapon

As for the reason I want to alias firearm to gun is because most sources I looked up stated that gun is a more all encompassing term and includes firearm under it, but not every firearm is a gun. I think it would be a good idea to have ordnance as the all encompassing term, but the only problem I see with that is how often it is tagged correctly as most people think of explosives when they think of ordnance. I think just lumping it under gun will work and it still has weapon on it either way for the more scifi or odd, non-gun looking things