IMFDB:Rules, Standards and Principles

Rules

1. Absolutely no screenshots of bootleg films may be uploaded.

2. Vandalism of pages will get you banned - no warning ahead of time. This means putting in obviously false or inflammatory information, removing the contents of an entire page or section or putting in gibberish or spam or threats or vulgar inappropriate content. Some members may put in semi-ridiculous comments like 'This gun rocks!' or 'This is my favorite gun'. Actions like these won't result in a ban, unless the person continues after multiple warnings. Those types of comments are best left in the discussion pages which accompany every page on the site.

3. Plagiarism is not tolerated regarding written descriptions . This means do not just cut and paste movie summaries or gun reviews or articles about the history or background of a gun, from some other site or publication, and put them here. You must write original paragraphs for the pages you contribute to. If it sounds like a sales pitch from a company website, or a seller's Gunbroker or Ebay description or an article written by a gun publication author, we will check and verify it. If it is a cut and paste copy, then it will be deleted.

Standards

1. General Standards for pages

• Make sure the page does NOT already exist before you make it. Before you make a page for a gun that you think IMFDB doesn't have, check carefully. Just because it doesn't have its own individual page doesn't mean it doesn't have one on another page. The M4 Carbine, for instance, goes on the M16 rifle series page, while all of the MP5, Glock, and SIG P220 variants are grouped on one page, etc. IMFDB's de facto policy for a while has been to group variants of particular guns - or guns that belong to the same basic family of weapons - on one page.
• Professional Titles only, no User created Media. Any user created media, meaning any movie, TV show, video game, or anime series that is not documented on IMDB, All Movie/TV/Game Guides, TV.com, IGN, or any other reputable media database - does not belong on IMFDB. This site documents gun appearances in professional media only. More specifically, this applies to user-made flash games, YouTube home movies done with airsoft guns, or anything else of the sort. The only exceptions will be user-created mods for first-person shooter video game (i.e. any of the mods for "Half-Life") - provided they are well-known and popular enough to warrant a page. When in doubt, ask an administrator and we will determine a game mod's value to IMFDB.

• Format
• Edits

• Make sure your changes to a page are correct!. It seems obvious but we spend too much time undoing reckless or just plain wrong informational changes, usually made by anonymous or new members. Don't make or incorrect edits to pages. If you believe information on a page is incorrect but are unsure, comment on it in the "Discussion" section of the page so it can be confirmed. Fight the urge to add your "gut-feeling" insight to a page.

• Layout

• Spell the title correctly When doing a new page for a film, make sure the title is grammatically correct and capitalized exactly. Don't use symbols unless they actually appear in the official title. For instance, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade‎ should not be "Indiana Jones & the last crusade". When in doubt, go to IMDB and copy-and-paste the title as it appears there. Note: we have many users on here from other countries, for whom English is not a first language. In Spanish, for instance, only the first word of any title is capitalized. So be picky, but be culturally sensitive, too.
• The American Release Title takes precedence When a film is an originally foreign film (even ones from English speaking nations like Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) the American Release Title is the official title on IMFDB. This differentiates us from IMDB, who insists on putting the original title in the first released country's original language. That creates a problem since most people don't search movie titles by their Non-English language titles. For example: in IMDB, Jackie Chan or director John Woo's Hong Kong movies are listed by their original Chinese titles, not the English language ones that most of us are familiar with. IMFDB on the other hand uses the American Released title as the 'official title'.

• Exception: There is no different American release title For some foreign movie titles, there is no other title, or the original is so internationally famous that everyone knows what it is. In that case, the original language title is allowed.

• Links Don't put hyperlinks to the gun pages in the titles of the sections. When creating a gun title section for a movie page, write a preliminary sentence like "A Smith & Wesson Model 10 is used by Joe Smith when hunting the monster" in the section above the gun image and screenshots. You don't put it in the title "==Smith & Wesson Model 10==" at the top of the section.
• Lame or Weak Pages. Contrary to the saying "Better something than nothing", it is actually better for IMFDB to not have a Movie Page entry rather than a lame or weak one. Thousand of viewers come to this site to check on weapons for a specific movie (or other visual media), and if they stumble on a terrible or lame page, that will reflect poorly on IMFDB as a whole. Mods will routinely sweep the site and delete weak or lame pages. It does not mean we don't want the pages, but there are minimum standards that must be adhered to, lest it make IMFDB look unprofessional. So don't put up a page that will eventually be deleted. We will wait until someone is ready to make a complete and professional page. But we actually don't encourage blank or lame pages as 'placeholders', because too many of them create the impression that half of our content is no content at all.

• Spoilers

• Unless it's is absolutely necessary, no Spoilers. Screenshots that show certain firearms that do reveal spoilers may be unavoidable, but always put a warning at the TOP of the page. Meaningless recaps of the entire story, including which characters get killed or what the mystery is, are not warranted. For most cases, these kinds of details are not necessary to depict and prove that certain guns were used by certain actors. So avoid describing events which are spoilers.

• Commentary

2. Screenshots

• Screenshots should be in the JPEG format and in a reasonable size. GIFs don't re-size well and they are non-compressed. PNGs are a problem because they are huge files. Please make sure your screenshot uploads are JPGs only, lest they be downloaded, converted to JPG and uploaded by someone else. It's all about file size and not overtaxing the servers. And please don't upload huge images that are thousands of pixels across. It is not necessary and the original (non-thumbnail version) is too large to be seen on many monitors.
• Quality take priority over bragging rights. A better quality screenshot can be uploaded over one of lesser quality. Blu-Ray images or high quality DVD images are preferable over standard definition images or older (lesser quality DVD) images.
• Widescreen takes priority over Full screen. If a member gets widescreen screenshots, they are preferred over 4:3 Full screen captures and can replace them. No member can complain if a higher quality image is uploaded on a page of the same screenshot. It's for the benefit of IMFDB to have the best images available.
• IMFDB's preferred page format is a thumbnail of either 500px or 600px wide. Exceptions are allowed for unusually wide high quality panoramic shots or images of particular interest but these should be kept to a minimum. Full screen images should be 500px wide, Wide Screen images should be 600px wide, except when the capture is of lesser quality. Grainy or low quality DVD scans should be 500px regardless (when something looks substandard, it is better to present it in a smaller size). Very high quality widescreen images should always be at least 600px wide to showcase their appearance.
• Screenshots should be relevant to their section. Putting in a variety of angles of the same weapon is not necessary unless one is trying to determine the identity of a 'mystery gun', thus the images help IDing the weapon. But putting in unnecessary images which don't show weapons clearly when there are other better screenshots is discouraged. Always go for the clearest shot of the gun. Don't try to re-tell the movie's plotline.

• Trivia related Images: Exceptions are trivia shots, but Trivia sections should be kept to a minimum and should be of general interest to movie buffs and not just re-iterate information that is on the DVD commentary. Acceptable trivia can mention military aircraft, vehicles and equipment in a film or television show or generally unknown information about a show or videogame that is weapons related in nature.

3. Gun Images

• Redundancy not acceptable. If IMFDB already has the image in question, don't google a similar image and upload it. IMFDB technically should not be using 'jacked' gun images off the net. Their copyright belongs to someone else, and if the copyright holder requests it, we must comply in finding those images and deleting them from our site. Some items are unavoidable, i.e. prototype or rare foreign weapons which no one has access to (especially Russian or Chinese weapons or heavy military firepower from any country). However, the rule is, if the image of the gun already exists here, don't upload any more. There had better be a really compelling reason to do so, like a specific variant that best matches a variant in a movie, television show, Anime or Video Game. The Biggest exception is Screen used Hero guns. Having those on the site are self explanatory, but they may be an unusual configuration or just really worn or beat up guns. Having those and pristine examples of the weapons are acceptable to IMFDB.
• Every variant is not necessary. Unless it appears in a film, television show, anime or Video Game, don't upload every variation of every gun possible. This is not a race to see who can find and 'hijack' the most gun images from other people's websites. Also being that most of these unnecessary images are 'jacked' images, they can be deleted at any time at the request of the original copyright holder, so we all have been warned.
• IMFDB is not a gun encyclopedia. We don't need pages for every gun ever made, only guns which have actually appeared in something. Please refrain from creating new pages for guns that don't appear in any movie, television show, anime or Video Game. Just because it exists somewhere doesn't mean we want it here.

Principles

1) This is a source of Information for weapons and movie buffs around the world. Certainly it is tempting to think of IMFDB as one's own personal 'playground' but please realize that we do this work to serve others. It is harsh on one's ego to be corrected or to have one's information proven wrong, but it will always be in the best interests of IMFDB to maintain a high level of scholarly achievement in our analysis and documentation of the two worlds of firearms and film (which includes television and Anime as well as other visual media like Video Games).