Posted under General
I'm not sure named weapons should be implicated to a weapon type. I think they should be treated more like characters, in that while the norm is that they're in one form, it doesn't guarantee that all depictions of that object will be in that form. Similar to how you wouldn't implicate gender or hair color to a character.
True, there will always be cases like post #282156's Fork of Longinus and post #518220's Polearm the Gungnir, but having skimmed the named weapons that came to mind and found a handful at most of such exceptions, I think the benefits of named weapon -> weapon type implications outweigh their downsides.
Given that, I'd also propose:
spear_the_gungnir -> spear
laevatein -> spear
lance_of_longinus -> spear (it doesn't fit lance, which is for jousting-type lances only)
The Spear the gungnir -> spear implication has been proposed before in forum #19975.
NWF Renim said:
I disagree with this implication. Some depictions of this "spear" depict it more or less as an immaterial mass of energy, such as post #263841, post #437190, and post #447815. They're barely what I would call a "spear."Even if the weapon is made of energy, it should still have a clear enough form of the weapon to receive the corresponding weapon tag (or any other tag corresponding to a specific physical item/shape)
You shouldn't have them implicate spear, unless they really are spear shaped, they should go to the more general polearm if they don't truly match up with spear.
Regardless though, I'm still -1 to any implication.
Any implication where there are exceptions at all we have not pushed through, I still agree with that sentiment.
I'm really not sure I would tag post #630010 with sword, the only sword-like thing in the image is the handle and previous knowledge that it's supposed to be a sword.
Having read the spear wiki, I'm not convinced that it is optimally defined. The wiki says "sharp, pointed blade", implying that non-bladed weapons aren't eligible, but such a definition excludes javelins, which I would consider thrown spears. (Plus I really think the Lance of Longinus is a spear from a common sense point of view.)
Spear the Gungnir is, I suppose, a matter of opinion; I would call all three of the posts you linked in the other thread "clearly spear-shaped" (well, maybe not the third one, but that's more an issue of sketchy art than it is one of conscious design decision). On the other hand, closer inspection reveals that Laevatein is often represented as a bendy mess as per ZUN's original art, so an implication to spear or polearm is probably a bad idea in retrospect.
So, take two:
Mostly it would just bug me if named weapons weren't findable under a search for some general tag. At the very least, I think we can all agree that all of the above can be implicated to weapon if the above implications don't meet with popular approval.
Given that the Spear the Gungnir can be depicted as masses of energy like post #248932, I'd say the implication is out of the question for it. If you're going to call that a weapon, they you might as well call any other sort of massed energy as a weapon, as there are plenty of gathered energy that can take similar forms.
I believe expanding the definition of spear is a poor idea, if anything it should be restricted more. It should be restricted more to the stereotypical pole with a single pointed end. If you expand it, you're just going to make it impossible to find basic spears because you'll have to subtract more tags than you're able to use in searches.
Also I disagree on implicating weapon to some of those named "objects", most specifically laevatein and spear the gungnir. Not all depictions of gungnir can be classified as a weapon, and laevatein doesn't look like a weapon. In fact it's wiki says it's a wand, and we don't have wands implicate weapons... as wands normally aren't weapons.
