Talk:Improvised weapon

Examples section

This section is a list of improvised weapons and starts off with the statement Any object that can be picked up and used by one to cause bodily harm to another can be considered an improvised weapon. As we have discussed before I agree with that sentence, the question is how many examples should we provide here? Right now the list is quite long and disorganized, mostly unsourced and probably largely speculation or WP:OR. Since virtually any object, from a cotton ball to a Boeing 767, can and has been used as an improvised weapon I would suggest that we pare the list down to a dozen sourced items presented solely as examples, rather than an attempt to create an exhaustive list. - Ahunt (talk) 14:21, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

• A dozen is far to few to grasp how vast the variety of items that can be used truely is. There are a dozen and a half categories on this list and you would like to limit the list to fewer than that number of items. You state that the list is disorganized and yet it is organized by primary use. You have already removed the cited list, many of which apply to these items. I suggest that you wait for someone that has not pushed for the total elimination of all Improvised weapons from wiki to voice their opposition to the article. I wonder if you have some bias against the topic at hand. I have challanged you on multiple occasions, add to the article. Tomithy83 (talk) 00:05, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

And as I have explained before I have no bias against this topic, nor any other. I am a retired soldier and am trained in, and have used, improvised weapons. I am here to help build a well-cited and accurate encyclopedia. Please WP:AGF. I should point out I didn't remove List of improvised weapons - that was deleted based on a consensus of editors during AfD. Many articles are nominated for AfD and kept and that often results in them being improved as a result. I am working from comments heard in the AfD, which provides some useful guidance for this article. As User:Someone another rather well summed up: "a thousand random examples are not needed to demonstrate such a basic concept." and who also added "Bulking the list out with hundreds of entries and a cite apiece would only show that otherwise unrelated objects can be used to cause harm, which can be summed up in a sentence or two within the article. An article covering who uses improvised weapons, why, periods of time and places where they have been used extensively (history), what qualities are more likely to result in an item being used as an improv. weapon etc. etc. would be interesting, useful and could contain relevant examples. There's nothing wrong with the subject itself, it's just that you've selected a grossly inefficient way of delivering information which trivializes something which is not trivial at all." The other sections of the article need work, but the list is the most pressing part, a rather random list (ie: beer mugs, walking sticks, tree branches), mostly lacking citations. How about a maximum of three examples per category, keeping in mind that they all need to be cited. - Ahunt (talk) 02:07, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

In looking at this list more closely I think the categories are a problem. Not only are there an almost infinite number of objects that can be used as improvised weapons, there are a huge number of possible categories of them too. I really think that the suggestions from the AfD are the best way to proceed and that we should provide just a limited number of cited examples, say 12-24 in number, that illustrate the diversity of objects that can be used. - Ahunt (talk) 22:16, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

With a week passed and no objections, I believe we now have a consensus to proceed in cleaning up the article as above. - Ahunt (talk) 20:05, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

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