Also before I forget again: the logic is that we go by the Old Man being a similar case as Frisk from Undertale. I’m actually not sure if Frisk has been named outside of the game officially…
While within inside of the story "Gerson" and "the old man" are two different people, they are clearly the same character from an outside perspective. Those don't always have a 1:1 relationship; for example, Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker are two separate characters while being the same person. I cannot think of any examples that resemble Gerson's situation off the top of my head, sadly.
Splitting the Lightner and Darkner incarnations of Gerson would be basing our organizational criteria on in-universe factoids relayed by unreliable narrators (let's not forget, Ralsei is the one who relays the information). This seems like an unwise idea with a lot of room to go wrong; for these circumstances, I believe it is better to analyze fiction as fiction, and treat them both as the same character.
However, I was in favor of differentiating between "Gerson" and "the old man" in prose back when it was first suggested, and I still believe it is the right way to handle the divide. I believe it has already been fully implemented?
But they have been named in-game
Objectively, the Old Man is not the Dark World version of Gerson the same way that Kris or Susie just look different in the Dark World. The Old Man is a Darkner based on Gerson, which is clearly a different thing.
Also, there are so many points where the Gerson Boom page is confusing on whether it means Gerson or the Old Man, such as the Hammer of Justice being simply listed as Gerson's alternate form rather than the Old Man's, or the Old Man's shop being described as "Gerson's shop". It would be really annoying to have 60% of the page be "Gerson's Darkner reincarnation" or something like that, so it would just be way nicer overall to have two seperate pages rather than either make a page with misleading information or make a page bloated with clarifications.
Sorry if I offended you, but just because you have seniority with the wiki (which I do respect you for) doesn't mean I can't think you're wrong.
Anyway, I don't need to agree with that other random person. I guess I'm more of an Old Man extremist than them, lol.
In the Fangamer shop, the "characters" section lists Frisk by name
Sorry, did you mean Frisk or the Darkner? I meant that as that’s what we did across the wiki: we swapped their names to “the protagonist” and “Old Man” for their respective wikis. I’m still tired so I’m not thinking too clear…
That seems like convenience tag since the merch still has “human shirt”…
Frisk
That's why I said "Them" not "Him"
You’re free to edit that page, if there are sections referring to Old Man as Gerson. No, you don’t need to say “Gerson’s Darkner reincarnation”. That’s just Old Man. You can say Old Man. You don’t need to clarify that Old Man is Gerson’s Darkner reincarnation, because the page already says that.
Anyways, the clear consensus here seems to not be in favor of renaming.
Ralsei, when it comes to objective facts, has never lied to us. He's only ever said subjective opinions that are very disagreeable.
Also, no, the change isn't fully in place! That's why I made this post! Take one glance at Gerson's article, and you'll see the Old Man being called Gerson all over the place!
If anybody can think of a good way to clear up confusion, I'd be happy to go with that, but it just seems the most simple to create seperate pages.
then you can edit it to not do that
Did I literally ever suggest renaming the page? Even once?
At that point though, it's just an article about the Old Man, not Gerson. 99% of the article does not apply to Gerson at all. So why would he share a page when it's easier to give him his own?
Also, don't know why I didn't say earlier, but the little subtitle under the image saying it's of the Old Man and not Gerson proper literally doesn't show up on mobile, which was the last straw that made me make this post after wanting to say something for weeks. That's literally just spreading misinformation, no other way to slice it. As much as I agree that on paper it probably would be nicer to have them share a page, it just seems simpler and clearer to have them as seperate articles.
Again, do you think we should call HERO_SWORD "lilkris"?
No, but this is in the context of an article split, like you originally suggested.
Okay. Let's take a step back from the filenames. The wiki already has seperate pages for different forms of characters. This is one of the most notable examples of two seperate "forms". Why. Is. This. Any. Different.
While I’m no wiki editor the form separations appear to be so one can have an article for how a character is story/personality wise and then an article for purely their battle stats and dialogue.