Danbooru

Tag discussion: Semiautomatic

Posted under General

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't think that the Semiautomatic tag is needed since aside from Bolt action, you can't tell a weapon's firing mode just from appearances. Some people may not know from looks that a Glock 18 or a gun in the Kalashnikov family is selective fire. A semi-auto handgun can be automodded(I don't know the correct term) to fire automatic with minimal/no outward change in appearance. Thoughts? And if it's decided to keep it, can we throw a hyphen in there to correct it?

Quick question, do we distinguish Gatling guns from Miniguns here at all, even though there are probably very few if any images with actual hand-crank Gatling guns? Wikipedia says that the M134 Minigun employs Gatling-style rotating barrels, but only classifies it "Minigun" in name, and not in weapon type.

Updated by Heparine

Semiautomatic - redundant.

Gatling/minigun - Minigun is a gatling-type machine gun. The "gatling_gun" tag stands above the "m134_minigun" just as "assault_rifle" stands above the "M16". Read the wiki on gatling_gun, it gives a very clear answer to your question.

The problem is that semi-automatic is a broad term, and a fair amount of modern rifles are not strictly limited to one fire mode, its kind of like labeling "burst-fire"

Bolt action is distinctive since the bolt is readily apparent.

Semiautomatic isn't a broad term at all. If the firearm isn't strictly limited to the semiautomatic fire mode, it isn't semiautomatic, but selective fire.

But that's not the point. The tag is redundant - as Dogenzaka said, there's usually no way to tell a semiautomatic version of the firearm from the selective fire one (Glock 17 or 18, AR-15 or M16), and I doubt the discernment is even necessary, considering the fact Danbooru isn't barfcom, OPchan or /k/.

I recommend getting rid of the tag, though I'm curious whether manually detagging the images would be the only method for doing so.

If that doesn't happen, there's no need to add a hyphen. Semiautomatic as one word is a valid term.

Only barely related, how about aliasing minigun to m134_minigun? I've only seen the term "minigun" used in reference to that specific model.

It's been used in the past mostly to tag semi-automatic handguns, i.e. pistols. The best solution would be to nuke the "semiautomatic" tag and start distinguishing between "pistol" and "revolver" for handguns. So far, the "pistol" tag aliases to "handgun", which is... well, wrong. I wouldn't mind doing the gardening afterwards if a moderator fixed the tag alias.

What's the best way to deal with old single-shot pistols (flintlock, matchlock etc - the "highwayman" or "pirate" type)? There aren't a lot on Danbooru, but there are some - pirate pistol will find a handful, for instance.

I'm inclined to say that they're rare enough to just include in the "pistol" tag. The actual pistols alone aren't really iconic; people who are looking for them are more likely to actually be looking for, say, pirates as a general style, so they're use a search like I did above. I can't say it's ever come up for me personally, though, so maybe people who do search for that sort of thing have different opinions.

Personally I used "semiautomatic" in order to refine searches for semiautomatic handguns as opposed to revolver handguns. I honestly considered this useful and didn't realize there was such an opposition to this. And no, unlike /k/ommandos, I never used it to distinguish between semiauto-only (civilian) and select-fire versions of a submachine gun or assault rifle.

Also, if one consults the Wikipedia definition, handgun versus pistol is a cultural or semantic distinction, which is why I agreed in principle with the aliasing.

While I don't have much of an opinion on the "pistolhandgun" alias, I note that it was overturned with next to no evidence to support it should be. What is the visual distinction we should be using to keep those two tags separate? If there isn't one, why did we remove the alias?

As for "minigunm134_minigun", I think an alias would be a bad idea. While this may be more or less true when talking real guns in the real world, fictional miniguns show up all the time. If anything, I'd say the reverse as an implication: "m134_minigunminigun" would be more appropriate.

I'm re-reading this thread and finding that there were some major decisions made in an uncomfortably "hair-trigger" fashion. (Pun intended.) Are we now to assume that all handguns or pistols are now semi-automatic by default, unless one of the terms revolver, flintlock or derringer is present? What do you call the single-shot Thompson Contender then?

Nuking the semi-automatic tag (even removing the Wiki entry) altogether now seems really rash.

hungkok2007 said:
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The semiautomatic tag was highly ambiguous, that was the main issue of this thread. I don't see what's so rash about its deletion, especially given the fact nothing has really changed. The pistol tag will cover both 100% of the semiautomatic tag, derringers - and the single-shot pistols, which can be further differentiated by creating a single_shot tag and wiki entry that would be mentioned as related in the pistol and handgun entries, just as the derringer. I think that dichotomizing all modern handguns by the chamber position in the first place is much more sensible than having them divided into a ton of sub-sections by more or less substantial design nuances.

Updated

Shinjidude said:
While I don't have much of an opinion on the "pistolhandgun" alias, I note that it was overturned with next to no evidence to support it should be. What is the visual distinction we should be using to keep those two tags separate? If there isn't one, why did we remove the alias?

As we currently have it defined, a pistol is a subset of handgun, distinct from a revolver. Handgun can refer to a revolver or a pistol, and therefore should not be aliased to either of them.
+1 to removing the "pistolhandgun" alias

I'd also like to suggest a "pistol -> handgun" implication.

Similarly, a "revolver -> handgun" implication is tempting, but revolver-esque guns that are not actually handguns are currently tagged with it (post #790735).

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