Last modified on 9 August 2012, at 16:48

Talk:Big Smoke

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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)
Officially, most of the important characters have full names - eg Melvin Harris. However, that is not a good article title because it isn't intuitive... because nobody knows that name. We have already opted for less-complicated titles such as Vehicles in GTA San Andreas instead of List of vehicles in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Can you guess why? This wiki has to be usable more than technically accurate. We don't play things by the book, because there is no book - we write our own rules. There is no doubt that "Big Smoke" is the more well known name, and it is what he is referred to throughout the game, and it is what he is referred to in the official manual that comes with the game (alongside his real name). There is no real reason why we should not use those more common names.
I don't think a poll is a very dignified manner of deciding policy. If we ask a hundred people what they would type in to find out that fat guy from GTA SA, I'd put money on that they would all say Big Smoke. If we voted on which one was correct, that is a lot more subjective. His name is Melvin Harris, that is put at the start of his article as it should always be, but should that be the title of his article? That is not what he is referred to. Another thing is with CJ - he is known as both "Carl" and "CJ" throughout the game, and pretty much everybody would know that CJ stands for Carl Johnson, so that one isn't a problem (we use the technically correct version of the two if both are used a lot).
How should this be decided then? If we can come to an agreement amongst the staff, then that is absolutely fine. If we can't decide, then we'll ask a wider audience. I would prefer specific comments rather than a straightforward vote (which is easy to fake too). If a big fight breaks out then an administrative decision will have to be made at the top level - Xenon (?) 22:45, 15 May 2007 (BST)

Page Name 2

Is there a reason that this page has been moved from Melvin Harris to Big Smoke? A-Dust 20:30, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

This is a general response to all of the above discussion: I am in favor of using the most prominent in-game designation for characters, and in this case, it seems to me that Big Smoke is the most prominent name used for this character. In fact, the name Melvin Harris never arises in game dialogue, stats, etc., suggesting a naive player would necessarily first look for Big Smoke, and would subsequently be informed by the Wiki article as to his proper name. Isn't that the idea here? EganioTalk 22:24, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
==edit Age and Date of birth==

I think that Big Smoke born in 1957-1960, and he is 32-35 in GTA San Andreas