Tag implication : railgun_(weapon) -> weapon

As surprising as it may seem it's not already the case.

I don't see why railgun_(weapon) needs a *_(weapon) qualifier, so I'd move all of them to railgun before implicating.

My only argument in favor of the qualifier would be that railgun technology can conceivably be used for non-weapon applications (mass drivers, maglev trains, etc). For our purposes though, being unqualified is probably fine.

Since its called gun, can we also implicate gun?

Anelaid said:
Since its called gun, can we also implicate gun?

Not unless we change how we define a gun. Currently we equate gun to firearm.

DschingisKhan said:
Not unless we change how we define a gun. Currently we equate gun to firearm.

According to the wiki, we include energy weapons, though. It seems to me that our definition is more like "mid- to long-range weapon you hold in your hand(s)".

glasnost said:
According to the wiki, we include energy weapons, though. It seems to me that our definition is more like "mid- to long-range weapon you hold in your hand(s)".

See, the way I read that entry, the energy weapons go under ray_gun. We should probably decide this here and clarify it.

I guess I'll alias to railgun before implicating, yes. If we need railgun for non-weapons, I can remove the alias at that time.

I'm not sure about implicating gun... maybe.

A railgun more or less works like a gun, it fires a projectile and so on. The only difference is the propulsion used.

Railguns aren't necessarily "guns" though.

At least according to wikipedia, which is good enough, its a gun.

We're not Wikipedia. We have our own definitions for tagging.

To me, this looks like another prototyping case. Sure, you can argue technicalities all you want, but a railgun isn't exactly what someone would think of when you say "gun."

EMALS is effectively a railgun without a projectile.

e: not that it matters because we'll never see EMALS as a taggable concept here.

Hillside_Moose said:
We're not Wikipedia. We have our own definitions for tagging.

To me, this looks like another prototyping case. Sure, you can argue technicalities all you want, but a railgun isn't exactly what someone would think of when you say "gun."

Except all but two cases of railgun are in fact tagged gun. So up until this point, its been considered a gun, at least as far as tagging is concerned.

This isn't a matter of technicality, a railgun is a gun for all intents and purposes, except with a different from of propellent.

Log said:
EMALS is effectively a railgun without a projectile.

Technically the projectile is the aircraft since its an aircraft catapult, but its closer to the hypothetical mass driver, not a railgun.

Anelaid said:
Except all but two cases of railgun are in fact tagged gun. So up until this point, its been considered a gun, at least as far as tagging is concerned.

Then an implication isn't possible due to those two cases. The rest of the posts fit the image of a gun well enough, but tagging the remaining two with gun is wrong.

This isn't a matter of technicality, a railgun is a gun for all intents and purposes, except with a different from of propellent.

That is a matter of technicality.

No its not, the definition of a gun is firing a propellent. A railgun, by definition, cannot include anything that doesn't fire some form of projectile. ray guns are currently being applied to the 1950s pulp energy weapon, and those don't actually fire projectiles.

post #628123 shows a handheld gun. Granted its closer in scope to a gatling gun but its still a gun.

post #891759 shows a railgun mounted on the top of a mech. It doesn't define what it is, anyways, so I don't think there is enough evidence to tag it as anything other than weapon but there is no evidence that this isn't a gun.

At any rate, the two examples are closer to a failure to add the proper tags than anything that is close to an exception. I added the tags. Given how gun has been added to all other cases, which include both personnel and other types of railgun, these two aren't any different from what has been tagged.

If the argument is are railguns used to fire projectiles as weapons guns, then I'd say certainly, the alias should apply. Lets go by dictionary.com's first definition for "gun":

"gun" –noun
1. a weapon consisting of a metal tube, with mechanical attachments, from which projectiles are shot by the force of an explosive; a piece of ordnance.

This definitions would reasonably apply to all "railguns-as-weapons", it doesn't matter if it's a gatling gun or vehicle mounted (an airplane-mounted machine gun is still a gun for example).

My only reservations above were that someone could potentially label a non-weapon that projects things via electromagnetics a railgun. So long as we agree not to do that, the alias works.

mass driver can apply to non-weapon versions, as it is, in its most basic form, referencing anything that uses the railgun principle that isn't weaponized.