Alright, so we've had all these gun tags laying around for a while. Every now and then another gets implicated to gun but there's still a lot out there. One thing we know for certain is that we (by admin order) shouldn't be ultra specific with tagging them. We can all agree that having a tag like .223_bushmaster_semi-automatic_rifle is not only not helpful for searching (to bring up the 1 single post that happens to have it tagged), but these posts run the risk of not getting tagged rifle, gun, or even just weapon...which is somewhat obnoxious from a tagging point of view. Implicating (or even aliasing) all of them would be a massive project with extremely little benefit to the site; this much has already been established. This is, however, not why I've created this post.

The reason I've created this post is to say... okay, so we definitely shouldn't encourage obscure tagging... but how specific should we get? I mean, I know we should probably discourage gun tags like the one I mentioned because...well frankly they are a pain to keep track of, and probably not worth the effort. However there are a handful of guns that are more iconic than that which may at least be worth implicating such as the m16, ak-47, and the thombson_submachine_gun ("tommy gun"), and probably the uzi which even people who haven't even held a gun before have probably heard of at some point.

The tree below is just my suggestion of how this might be laid out. If we would alias anything away, it would most likely be to the tag above it.

This list is definitely not complete (nor should it ever be), but any suggestions would be appreciated. Note that for the most part tags with less than 5 posts probably aren't worth doing anything with unless they are particularly notable. Most of what I'm looking to add is very well-known ones to make exceptions for.

Ideally I think we should encourage retagging of all the ".22_caliber_winchester_submachine_autocannon_2nd_reissue"-type tags with something less specific, but that is probably subject for another forum (and definitely a tagging project in and of itself).

The desert eagle is similarly iconic, I'd say it deserves a tag if any guns do.
Possibly the Walther PPK as well, due to it's Bond fame.

The M1911 (1911 should be aliased to this!) and the M16 have a decent number of posts under their (ammo) belts. Most people, at least subconsciously, probably recognize those two. They're some of the most-produced weapons in the world and I've seen them in countless games, movies, etc.
The RPG seems pretty popular too. Aside from that, I don't really know...

parasprite said:

• m4^† - Can be a carbine, a rifle, a submachine gun, a shotgun, an autocannon (whatever that means)...I have no idea what the most common is tbh. Alias to gun?

The M4 is the carbine version of the M16. It has a shorter barrel, a folding stock, and a rail mount for accessories from flashlights to grenade launchers. Aside from that, it's pretty much the same gun... Both are based on the AR-15, which also includes various similar-looking weapons. Maybe they could be aliased to that? I don't know if it's worth keeping them separate.

I see bazooka is aliased to rocket_launcher, that's not exactly... accurate, but I guess it really doesn't matter at all here.

• railgun^†

Related are coilguns, also known as "Gauss rifles/cannons," which I see pop up once in a while. They're not quite the same thing, but they're both electromagnetic weapons that fire simple metal projectiles at extremely high speeds, and if we have a type of recoilless rifle aliased to rocket_launcher, I guess it's worth doing the same for this.

Also, like I mentioned to you earlier, the chain gun tag is so misused that it should probably just be aliased away. I think gatling gun is good enough.

One last thing: the minigun's name isn't an irony. Real miniguns are a lot smaller than their big brothers, but minigun is often applied to any sort of rotary cannon, no matter how decidedly not-mini it is! It wouldn't be a huge ordeal to fix that one, though. Keeping it fixed, on the other hand...

Durandal said:
The M1911 (1911 should be aliased to this!) and the M16 have a decent number of posts under their (ammo) belts. Most people, at least subconsciously, probably recognize those two. They're some of the most-produced weapons in the world and I've seen them in countless games, movies, etc.
The RPG seems pretty popular too. Aside from that, I don't really know...

The M4 is the carbine version of the M16. It has a shorter barrel, a folding stock, and a rail mount for accessories from flashlights to grenade launchers. Aside from that, it's pretty much the same gun... Both are based on the AR-15, which also includes various similar-looking weapons. Maybe they could be aliased to that? I don't know if it's worth keeping them separate.

I see bazooka is aliased to rocket_launcher, that's not exactly... accurate, but I guess it really doesn't matter at all here.

Related are coilguns, also known as "Gauss rifles/cannons," which I see pop up once in a while. They're not quite the same thing, but they're both electromagnetic weapons that fire simple metal projectiles at extremely high speeds, and if we have a type of recoilless rifle aliased to rocket_launcher, I guess it wouldn't be a problem aliasing gauss_* to railgun, but it's not very commonly used...

Also, like I mentioned to you earlier, the chain gun tag is so misused that it should probably just be aliased away. I think gatling gun is good enough.

One last thing: the minigun's name isn't an irony. Real miniguns are a lot smaller than their big brothers, but minigun is often applied to any sort of rotary cannon, no matter how not-mini it is! It wouldn't be a huge ordeal to fix that one, though. Keeping it fixed, on the other hand...

Railguns and gauss rifles are not the same thing as a recoilless rifle.
The magnetic firearms use solid metal projectiles, the damage it purely a function of momentum(mass*acceleration or in this case, deceleration due to impact).
Filling the shell with explosives like the recoilless rifles use would actually make an already hard to design weapon even harder since the amount of magnetic material in the round directly impacts the ability to accelerate it with the magnetic forces.
They certainly don't use a rocket propellant of any sort.

In short, they have literally nothing in common with a rocket_launcher and aliasing them that way would be absurd.

Having said all that, there's no real railgun or gauss rifle to base this tag on, I would say we can either alias to rifle, or firearm, or create a futuristic_weapon tag for things like that or something.

Definitely not rocket launcher though.

Halite said:
Railguns and gauss rifles are not the same thing as a recoilless rifle.
The magnetic firearms use solid metal projectiles, the damage it purely a function of momentum(mass*acceleration or in this case, deceleration due to impact).
Filling the shell with explosives like the recoilless rifles use would actually make an already hard to design weapon even harder since the amount of magnetic material in the round directly impacts the ability to accelerate it with the magnetic forces.
They certainly don't use a rocket propellant of any sort.

In short, they have literally nothing in common with a rocket_launcher and aliasing them that way would be absurd.

Having said all that, there's no real railgun or gauss rifle to base this tag on, I would say we can either alias to rifle, or firearm, or create a futuristic_weapon tag for things like that or something.

Definitely not rocket launcher though.

I didn't say they were the same thing. I was comparing the similarities of recoilless rifles and rocket launchers to those of railguns and coilguns. They're a lot different in actuality, but most people don't realize that. I know that rocket launchers and recoilless rifles have next to nothing in common, I'm not that clueless...

Durandal said:
The M1911 (1911 should be aliased to this!) and the M16 have a decent number of posts under their (ammo) belts. Most people, at least subconsciously, probably recognize those two. They're some of the most-produced weapons in the world and I've seen them in countless games, movies, etc.

1911 technically overlaps with the year tags, although I'm not sure if anything exists specific to furry art from the year 1911...or if there is, if it's even here and tagged.

Manually moving anything tagged there might be a better option.

Durandal said:

The RPG seems pretty popular too. Aside from that, I don't really know...

RPG is also an acronym for role-playing game (as in Dungeons & Dragons). Now I know why that hasn't been aliased to that already. ;)

Those should probably be manually retagged to something else.

Durandal said:
The M4 is the carbine version of the M16. It has a shorter barrel, a folding stock, and a rail mount for accessories from flashlights to grenade launchers. Aside from that, it's pretty much the same gun... Both are based on the AR-15, which also includes various similar-looking weapons. Maybe they could be aliased to that? I don't know if it's worth keeping them separate.

My head hurts.

Halite said:
The desert eagle is similarly iconic, I'd say it deserves a tag if any guns do.
Possibly the Walther PPK as well, due to it's Bond fame.

I've heard of the desert eagle, and it looks like their are 16 posts with it so it's definitely being used at least.

• pistol
• desert_eagle

I've never heard of the Walther PPK (1 post), but it's probably just undertagged (or tagged under a few different names) if it's that specific to Bond (just my guess). I'm not sure if it should be implicated or aliased because it would seem like james_bond + gun (or something similar) would pull up something...but there's only 12 posts under james_bond. Most Bond-related posts are probably just tagged parody or something obscure, unfortunately.

• pistol
• walther_ppk

parasprite said:
RPG is also an acronym for role-playing game (as in Dungeons & Dragons). Now I know why that hasn't been aliased to that already. ;)

Those should probably be manually retagged to something else.

Rocket-propelled_grenade(_launcher?).

It's a backronym from the original Russian name of a specific weapon, but it happens to be accurate. I was referring to the RPG-7, probably the world's most (in)famous anti-armor weapon. It's only got five posts now, but I'm positive that it's just very under-tagged.

And here I thought we was gonna talk about cool shit in this thread, nope just tagging....

RustyNails said:
And here I thought we was gonna talk about cool shit in this thread, nope just tagging....

You can always make your own off-topic gun thread! But... I looked through the forum and it seems like all of the previous ones devolved into a gun control debate...

Durandal said:
You can always make your own off-topic gun thread! But... I looked through the forum and it seems like all of the previous ones devolved into a gun control debate...

But we need to get control of these gun tags as they are clearly out of control. Gun tags are literally killing so many innocent people's time and energy!

Think of the innocent lolis that are holding guns, they won't get tagged properly! This is literally a crime against the nature of good tagging!

Oh yeah, the one that really bothered me was the wiki page for machine_gun which uses US law to define them. US law classifies any fully automatic weapon as machine guns, including assault rifles and shotguns. The editor specifically said that assault rifles are a type of machine gun. I... greatly resent that statement.

I'm not sure what to do with the submachine_gun tag, by the way. Technically, submachine guns are a form of machine gun (obviously), but they are very distinct, usually being much smaller than even "Light" machine guns. So should it implicate machine_gun or be kept separate?
Speaking of which, should we use a "Light_machine_gun" tag? Or is machine_gun good enough?

Durandal said:
Oh yeah, the one that really bothered me was the wiki page for machine_gun which uses US law to define them. US law classifies any fully automatic weapon as machine guns, including assault rifles and shotguns. The editor specifically said that assault rifles are a type of machine gun. I... greatly resent that statement.

I'm not sure what to do with the submachine_gun tag, by the way. Technically, submachine guns are a form of machine gun (obviously), but they are very distinct, usually being much smaller than even "Light" machine guns. So should it implicate machine_gun or be kept separate?
Speaking of which, should we use a "Light_machine_gun" tag? Or is machine_gun good enough?

Don't Light Machine Guns still require two hands, while SMGs don't?

Furrin_Gok said:
Don't Light Machine Guns still require two hands, while SMGs don't?

Only handguns are meant to be fired from one hand. Light machine guns, somewhat contrary to their name, are fuckin' heavy.

Submachine gun vs light machine gun

LMGs usually require a bipod to be fired accurately.

Durandal said:
Only handguns are meant to be fired from one hand. Light machine guns, somewhat contrary to their name, are fuckin' heavy.

Submachine gun vs light machine gun

LMGs usually require a bipod to be fired accurately.

Yeah, SMGs are "basically" one handed. The recoil will throw your aim off if you do so, but it's not likely to snap your wrist out of place. It's a form of automatic that's intended for two hands still, but can work if one arm ends up disabled for some reason.

Think of it like a one-and-a-half handed gun. Get anything at all to help brace from the recoil, and it's no problem. Bigger than automatic handguns, though.

Furrin_Gok said:
Yeah, SMGs are "basically" one handed. The recoil will throw your aim off if you do so, but it's not likely to snap your wrist out of place. It's a form of automatic that's intended for two hands still, but can work if one arm ends up disabled for some reason.

Think of it like a one-and-a-half handed gun. Get anything at all to help brace from the recoil, and it's no problem. Bigger than automatic handguns, though.

Of course. It wouldn't be unreasonable to fire a submachine gun in a few short bursts with one hand... just not "Action hero" style full-auto. After all, they all have the same caliber as handguns. Their increased weight means you will feel less recoil per individual shot.

Furrin_Gok said:
Think of it like a one-and-a-half handed gun. Get anything at all to help brace from the recoil, and it's no problem. Bigger than automatic handguns, though.

It sounds like the bastard sword of guns.

parasprite said:
It sounds like the bastard sword of guns.

Well...

Durandal said:
Well...

carbine

Sounds about right.

And here I thought this site wasn't about guns. Basic tags are fine. Any deeper and people just argue in the comments when they are allowed too.

Hence that rule about guns

CamKitty said:
And here I thought this site wasn't about guns. Basic tags are fine. Any deeper and people just argue in the comments when they are allowed too.

Hence that rule about guns

Yeah, this thread was more intended for "are there any well known gun tags with more than a few posts that I'm missing right now" and "do I have any massive errors in here".

What I've managed to gather so far is "Desert Eagle" and "probably not".

parasprite said:
Yeah, this thread was more intended for "are there any well known gun tags with more than a few posts that I'm missing right now" and "do I have any massive errors in here".

What I've managed to gather so far is "Desert Eagle" and "probably not".

Well, I mentioned those other guns earlier, too.

But maybe they should all go. We don't tag aircraft or cars, either.

Durandal said:
Well, I mentioned those other guns earlier, too.

But maybe they should all go. We don't tag aircraft or cars, either.

Oh yeah, the m1911 and m16 as well. I already forgot about those.

It may still be worth gathering the well-used ones for aliasing purposes, since they'll get retagged semi-frequently if we don't. In the end the most important thing is probably going to be making sure they get tagged gun at all.

parasprite said:
Yeah, this thread was more intended for "are there any well known gun tags with more than a few posts that I'm missing right now" and "do I have any massive errors in here".

What I've managed to gather so far is "Desert Eagle" and "probably not".

I laughed, loudly, in public. My neighbors think I'm crazy now, so thanks.

Is this thread still relevant, because the wiki definition for gun currently does not refer to any hand-held firearms, despite tags like rifle implying it. So I guess I'll change that soon.

And I know this site isn't all about guns, but they really are a bitch to tag and I just want to help fix this mess

Durandal said:
Is this thread still relevant, because the wiki definition for gun currently does not refer to any hand-held firearms, despite tags like rifle implying it. So I guess I'll change that soon.

And I know this site isn't all about guns, but they really are a bitch to tag and I just want to help fix this mess

...Yeah that wiki can be torn apart however you like. 99% of the users here would probably stop reading by the end of the first line and the rest of it is mostly just history and jargon anyways. You can leave the "see also" section for me if you want. I'm going to be pasting in the tag tree for all of them at once probably tomorrow and there's not much sense in duplicating work that's mostly done already.