Category talk:Lists of weapons by armed forces

Cutting all "Lists of weapons by armed forces" pages

The recent (re-)creation of List of firearms used by Polish Armed Forces has triggered several discussions about the place for such lists on IMFDB. I discussed this issue with User:Funkychinaman in the IMFDB staff discord, and I argued that all such pages should be cut from IMFDB. The main reasonings, developed between me and funkychinaman (who OK'd my proposal), are the follows:

• IMFDB is not a general firearm encyclopedia.
• IMFDB is bad at being a general firearm encyclopedia, and these lists are inherently less reliable than equivalent Wikipedia lists.
• The existence of these lists attracts nationalist editing.

While funkychinaman is OK with my proposal to cut all of the pages from IMFDB, he mentioned that some admins wanted to keep the "original 5" country armed forces lists (i.e.: the British, German, Russian, French, and US pages). I am thus starting a discussion here to see if we can come to a staff-wide consensus on what to do with these lists. --Wuzh (talk) 18:51, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

At the very least, we have to make it abundantly clear that no more such pages are allowed. We shot down a bunch of them a few years ago, and I think people got the idea for the most part. I have another reason for not allowing them: they may lead to bad IDs. The US Army and the USMC adopted the M16A2 in the eighties, but how many movies or shows actually have real A2s? Again, this circles back to the we're not a gun encyclopedia thing. --Funkychinaman (talk) 01:09, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Following up, I agree that these should be removed and go beyond our purposes of cataloging firearms in media.--AgentGumby (talk) 16:11, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Anyone else want to add in their opinions? Current consensus leans towards cutting all of the armed forces lists. --Wuzh (talk) 18:03, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Remove them all. These lists do not assist in the identification of firearms in media. LJ (talk) 19:15, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Alright. Since I have not seen any direct opposition to my proposal, I will be cutting all of the "Lists of weapons by armed forces" pages. --Wuzh (talk) 04:24, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Way late to the party but as I'd have supported removing the list pages wholesale I guess I'm just putting my stamp of approval for posterity. I've long been saying we're not an encyclopedia yet over the last few years have seen the site sidle more into trying to be one. There is a degree of knowledge we have to have but only in support of the site's purpose, not for the sake of it. Closest thing I could ever see to a point for having these is as reference to note potential historical or technical inaccuracies in their portrayals.. But we really don't need to have that here. StanTheMan (talk) 03:13, 7 February 2024 (UTC)