I'd even go so far as to say we should make two different pages for Gerson and the Old Man. We have seperate pages for things like Spamton and his NEO form, so it makes sense for these technically seperate characters to at least be referred to with different names.
But we know they're the same people
I feel like a better split would be Old Man and Hammer of Justice split (to match Spamton main story vs Spamton secret boss)
The Old Man is explicitly referred to in the game as a Darkner BASED on Gerson Boom, not just Gerson himself. They're explicitly not the same
person. The Sound of Justice is based on the Old Man, so does that mean they should have the same page? Obviously not.
It would be like having Dragon Blazers and the Prophecy not only share a page, but for the two to be treated interchangeably and for Dragon Blazers to be repeatedly referred to as the Legend of Delta Rune itself. It's so very cleary incorrect.
Edit: Meant to say Lord of the Hammer, not Dragon Blazers.
Close enough for me so I'll continue to call the Old Man "Gerson" unless you're in the thread
Or we can all just collectively call him "I'm old!"
Keep calling him Gerson all you want. I really couldn't care less. But on a literal encyclopedia about the game, we could probably use to not spread blatantly misleading information.
I feel like the Gerson page would be kinda redundant. Like what would it have other than the fact that he’s dead, made lord of the hammer, and was the dad to Alvin? We could already put that in the “old man” page.
But we already do this. We refer to the Darkner as Old Man, and Lightner as Gerson. This change was made like a couple weeks ago.
I don’t think a separate page would be useful. They are clearly meant to be the same character in the context of the game.
I mean, we have pages for other characters that haven't actually appeared. You're right that it would be somewhat redundant, but I think it's better to be redundant than unclear.
Did you see the code citations?
For your first point, as far as I can tell, that's not true? There's, like, at least fifty different points where the Old Man is referred to as Gerson, and you barely have to look to find it. There's literally one in the first heading of the page.
For your second point, that's not true. The whole point was that the Old Man wasn't really Gerson, because fiction can't bring real people back to life.
Code citations don't really mean anything. Toby referred to him as Gerson in development because it's simpler and more clear to do so, but he's only ever called him the Old Man, even in the newsletter with concept art for him.
I think you misunderstand my point. I'm not saying that the Old Man isn't BASED ON Gerson; that's literally the whole point of the Old Man. I'm arguing that Gerson and the Old Man are two seperate characters and should be treated as such.
If you're still convinced filenames are that important, we call the character referred to in the files as "lilkris" "HERO_SWORD" because it's used in official media. "Old Man" is also used in official media, and also literally in the game, even after Susie is aware that the Old Man is based off Gerson. If you want to argue that the Old Man's official, canon name is Gerson Boom, you also have to argue that HERO_SWORD's official name is lilkris, and good luck convincing people that's the case.
Part of the reason why I had pointed that out in the first place is because there’s an intentional development design. It would seem like a disservice to split them especially when Gerson Boom’s naming convention is intentionally a reference to Smash.
Right now, if we split up “Gerson Boom” and the “Old Man'“, then we end up splitting the “Cameos” section which is pointing out how Gerson’s Undertale shop dialogue was used.
I honestly have no idea what point you're trying to make with your first paragraph, but for your second point, we'd still have a Gerson Boom page to put the "Cameos" section in, and we could also put it in the "Trivia" or even just main text of the Old Man's page that his dialogue is a reference to Gerson's dialogue in Undertale. Just because we have an Old Man page doesn't mean we can't have a Gerson Boom page.
I didn’t say they are physically the same person, I said they represent the same character in the game. “Darkner based on a Lightner’s memories is not physically the same Lightner”, yeah, but they’re still the same character. The page already states what the distinction is.
You’re free to correct pages which refer to the Old Man as Gerson. I just don’t think acting like they’re two separate characters is doing anybody a favor.
I really just can't wrap my head around wanting to use a name for a character used only during development and in no official media rather than the official name used by the developer and in the game itself. For a case like the Sound of Justice, FRIEND, or HERO_SWORD (before the Fangamer figurine), it makes sense because there's no official name, but not only is there an official name, the name in the files that you think we should use already belongs to another character who is already easily confused to be the exact same as this character. It's like you want this wiki to be as user-unfriendly and hard to understand as physically possible.
Yes, they are technically are (or probably more accurately HAVE) the same character. They're still canonically two different people, and it's just so laughably bad to have a page titled "Gerson Boom" and then directly under the title have a picture of a character never referred to as Gerson Boom.
The infobox lists the Old Man’s image under the “Dark World” label. Because the Old Man is the Dark World version of Gerson Boom. I don’t see where the confusion is.
Because during a past discussion with someone who had gone in favor of wanting “Old Man” and “Gerson Boom” to be identified separately, someone was fine with the whole “Old Man” and “Gerson” naming be changed across the wiki. Even that person had said that it seemed needless to split both of them from an article.
If you simply wanted to suggest, “I think we should have Old Man be used in the main article instead for the Darkner”, then it’d be a fine change.
Also, that last sentence is very unnecessary from you. I’ve been writing on the wiki for years, and have been trying help repair it since we forked. I care. A lot.
Edit: I apologize if I am not clear, by the way. I am a bit tired.