Talk:Big Smoke

Page Name

Was wondering whether the page should be moved to either Melvin Harris or Melvin "Big Smoke" Harris. The same would go for Ryder (to Lance Wilson|Lance "Ryder" Wilson), OG Loc (Jeffrey Cross|Jeffrey "OG Loc" Cross), Sweet (to Sean Johnson|Sean "Sweet" Johnson) and Juan Cortez (to Juan Garcia Cortez). Just a suggestion. A-Dust 21:35, 15 May 2007 (BST)

This is a wiki by the way, and I think that the pages should be renamed like that to reflect the real characters, but also have redirects of their "nicknames" so new users can easily find pages. 47

I do not agree. Nobody is going to type in "Melvin Harris" every time they want to find some info on him. Big Smoke is what he is referred to in the game, even though we find out what his real name is.

I believe that people should go by what they are best known as, so all the above pages would be "Big Smoke", "Sweet", "OG Loc" and "Colonel Cortez". For example, Kent Paul is really called "Paul something", but should be be listed as that? If we found out Auntie Poulet's first name, would we put her on "Dorothy Poulet"? Ken is short for Kenneth, but should we have him on "Kenneth Rosenberg"? Obviously not, because we know the person almost exclusively by their nickname.

This debate could go on. And it should. The GTASA PC manual says: Sean "Sweet" Johnson as well as Jizzy B and Maccer and Kent Paul (also note it says Officer Tenpenny instead of Frank). Those are probably the names we should use. However, I don't think Sean "Sweet" Johnson is a good article name - it should be one or the other, not both. So we need to make a decision, and write some specific Policy so that we achieve consistency.

Either All characters should be titled by their full name wherever possible; or

Characters should be titled by what they are best known as, even when a relatively-unknown full-name alternative is available.

I mean, I bet not many people would know who Melvin Harris is if I asked them. If I said Big Smoke, they would. Same with Sean Johnson or Lance Wilson or Jeffrey Cross or Thomas Vercetti or Juan García Cortez or Mitch Baker (without the "Big").

I vote for Sweet, Big Smoke, OG Loc, Ryder, Colonel Cortez, Officer Tenpenny, Officer Pulaski, Kent Paul, Big Mitch Baker etc - because then everyone knows instantly who we are talking about, and the full name (if known) is always in bold at the start of the article.

ps 47 - this is a big decision affecting the naming of articles on the entire wiki, so it needs discussion before you decide that we do it one way or the other. Keep this discussion going - Xenon (?) 22:16, 15 May 2007 (BST)

Now that I have thought about it, it is a much bigger issue then it looks. We need to come to a decision on this. I have reviewed what Xenon has wrote, if Rockstar used Big Smoke as the official name under all descriptions, manuals, strategy guides, etc., then thats what we have to go for. On the other hand we can opt for accuracy. Both ways there have to be redirects to any name the character has. However we then have to pull a compromise when a character is named "Sean "Sweet" Johnson]], because it will just create more of a mess here. Another idea is to look into a official game strategy guide to see how it is done there and the wiki definetly needs to have a poll on this very important issue; so we can make it a standard and add it into the policy.

47 22:30, 15 May 2007 (BST)