Talk:Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

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Discussion

Welcome to the discussion page for the wiki book Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. This is divided into three sections:-


 * Standards: From my experience, I have found it essential that any collaborative effort maintain standards. It doesn't really matter what they are, providing everyone agrees to them. Try to follow these standards if you think they make sense. If not, feel free to change them until they do make sense.
 * Information: This section holds useful information about the current status of the book. Try to keep this up-to-date.
 * Miscellaneous Comments: Anything else should go here.

Discussion

 * To minimize the amount of page traversal required, all discussion about any part of the book should be in this page.

Page Naming

 * The main page for the book shall be "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas".


 * All sub-pages which are conceptually a part of this guide, should be prepended with the string "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: ".

e.g. A page entitled "Frequently Asked Questions" should be created as "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Frequently Asked Questions".


 * When choosing a name for a new sub-page, try to avoid unnecessary abbreviations.

e.g. "Frequently Asked Questions" is a more informative name than "FAQ".


 * New page names should use title caps.

e.g. "This Title Uses Title Caps", "This title doesn't use title caps".
 * To prevent namespace collisions of similar sub-pages for which there many be a large numbers of (e.g. missions/characters), I suggest the following:
 * All pages about specific missions should be preprended with the string "Mission: "
 * All pages about specific characters should be preprended with the string "Character: "
 * All pages about specific vehicles should be preprended with the string "Vehicle: "
 * All pages about specific items should be preprended with the string "Item: "

e.g. "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Mission: Ryder" shall be about the "Ryder" mission, and "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Character: Ryder" shall be about the character named "Ryder".

Image Naming
It's advisable to give an image a descriptive name due to certain technical considerations. For example "GTASA_tag_10.jpg" is going to be a lot more useful than "ashsg0al.jpg". Remember, this is not mandatory, and won't matter as far as end users are concerned, but if you can give an image a good name then you might as well. It will also help avoid uplodaed images having similar or conflicting names.

Page Content

 * All pages in the book should use the following header at the top of the page:

Assuming there is text directly below the header, it will appear like this:

[ Main Page | Contents | Index ]

Page Title Here

(Text starts here)

The tags are required to ensure the heading does not overlap any text above or below it. (Anyone know why this happens? I figured a browser should be able to cope with this without the tags. Maybe an issue with the font leading?) (you're not "supposed" to use size tagging in the first place, which is also why "12" is interpreted as "+12". That, and the div tags, seem to force everything to take up a default-size line no matter what. --MTG)


 * Try to use subheadings effectively to generate a sensible auto-contents box for each page.

Main Page
This is perhaps analagous to the cover of a book. Being the first thing a user is likely to see upon visiting the site, it should be kept brief, so as not to overwhelm them. This should not be considered part of the content.

Contents
Currently, this is the only complete index of all active sub-pages. This should not be considered part of the content.

Index
I have made a (very pathetic) start on an alphabetical index, but it could be annoying to maintain. This should not be considered part of the content.

Frequently Asked Questions
Since the FAQ page may contain information which overlaps the main content, it should be considered a separate part of the book. This should not be considered part of the content.

Active Pages, new naming structure
Utilizing slashes (/) instead of colons after the initial book name is the ideal; this is both a technical consideration as well as automatically threading and nesting the linked pages.


 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Vehicles
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Vehicles/Vehicle Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Cheats (invisible parent directory)
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Cheats/PS2
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Cheats/Xbox
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Cheats/PC
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/100% Completion Checklist
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Frequently Asked Questions

Active Pages, old naming structure
These pages should eventually be assimilated into the new naming structure


 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Contents
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Index
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Basics
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Appearance Guide
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Los Santos Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Sean "Sweet" Johnson I
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Lance "Ryder" Wilson
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Cesar Vialpando
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Melvin "Big Smoke" Harris
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Jefferey "OG Loc" Martin
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Officer Frank Tenpenny
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Sean "Sweet" Johnson II
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Angel Pine Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: San Fierro Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Las Venturas Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Zero's RC Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Wang Autos Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Four Dragons Casino Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Trucking Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Burglary Guide
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Turf Wars
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Tag Locations
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Oyster Locations
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Photo Locations
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Horseshoe Locations
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Unique Jump Locations
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Dating Guide
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Characters
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: 178 Territories Glitch
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Mods
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Sources

Orphaned Pages
The following pages are not linked from anywhere other than here. These should eventually be merged in and/or removed.


 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Wang Cars Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: B-Plot Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: B-Plot Missions Wang Cars Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: B-Plot Missions Zero's RC Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Pimping

Redirects
The following pages merely link to better-named versions; all references to them should be updated to go directly to the new name.


 * Cheats:Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas (PS2)
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: R3 Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Vehicles
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Vehicle Missions
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Cheats (PS2)
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Cheats (Xbox)
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Cheats (PC)
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Frequently Asked Questions

Content Still Needed

 * Quarry Missions?
 * Flowers
 * the "invisible" parent page Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Cheats does not exist; perhaps something could go there, maybe a master cheats overview like GTASanAndreas.net has?

Currently Active Authors
If you're actively modifying any part of the book, add your name and timezone to this list. If you know that you are not going to be an active author for some time, either remove your name from this list, or otherwise mark it as inactive.


 * Master Thief Garrett
 * Aya (UTC)

One-liners
Append a comment if you wish. This also seems to have evolved into an informal version history section.


 * This walkthrough needs more work including screenshots and maps. --24.59.197.201 17:11, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Please, add as you see fit. This books needs a lot of filling out.  As it is a highly popular game, a good walkthrough here might encourage similar work with other games.  --Alpharigel 22:40, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm delighted to see someone else is actual concern about the game guides, i'll try to give you a hand with the gta guide, and develkop a standard format. --CGorman 16:05, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I suggest we wait untill the PC version to take screenshots. --142.46.130.26 00:45, 23 May 2005


 * Added FAQ sub-page. Tidied this page, and added some proposed style guidelines. --Aya 15:48, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Added font-formatting explanation. --Master Thief Garrett 03:07, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Added more FAQ content. Major changes to this page. --Aya 17:20, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Moved contents from the main page to its own page, and added all active pages to it, in an effort to keep track of what content we have already. More major changes to this page. --Aya 21:35, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mission page renaming
The mission pages are getting ridiculously long names. Like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Sean "Sweet" Johnson I.

Then if Aya makes his individual mission pages we'll have even *longer* names.

What I suggest is that we have pages named like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Missions: Sweet: Mission Here. Short and simple. We don't need the person's surnames etc., just the main name used for them. Similarly, the character page for him would be Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Characters: Sweet.

That is if we change Grand Theft Auto >> GTA for the longer page names of course. But they definitely need to be threaded together somehow, and not just by the character. Master Thief Garrett 01:51, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

UPDATE: upon further investigation of the Wikibooks mechanics, shortening the name is not advisable as those pages would be "orphaned" from the actual namespace. Master Thief Garrett 03:09, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Re: Mission page renaming
I'm worried (although no-one else seems to be) about namespace collisions across the whole Wikibooks site. Some Wikibooks have taken extremely common page names like Appendix in the global namespace.

I figured it would be polite to minimise this 'pollution' by ensuring a consistent prefix which is guaranteed never to collide with anything else. I don't see a big problem if we at least keep the global prefix as per the above standards, especially considering every page so far already uses that convention. Bear in mind that I initially wrote the standards based on what was convention at the time. Much easier than changing all existing content to meet a new set of standards.

Regarding new mission pages (if I ever get around to it), I was considering dropping the name of the mission 'boss' from the page name completely. I want to minimise the number of pages containing indices, since these need to be updated if any page names change, so I'm just thinking of a separate content-page for each significant concept, and one HUGE contents page to index it.

As far as I can see there are two choices:


 * Use separate namespaces
 * Use disambiguation where necessary

The former will produce pages named:


 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Mission: Ryder
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Character: Ryder
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Vehicle: Infernus

And the latter:


 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Ryder (mission)
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Ryder (character)
 * Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Infernus

Personally I find the former slightly neater, but I'm fairly easy either way. Aya 03:16, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * The advantage of the first method is that you can see where a page is "housed" without brackets. Also it creates "clean" URLs, for example "Grand_Theft_Auto:_San_Andreas:_Contents" as opposed to "Grand_Theft_Auto:_San_Andreas:%28Contents%29".
 * Also a visitor who comes across a URL leading to "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Vehicles/Infernus" can cut off the car name to get Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Vehicles, whereas if they decided that "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Ryder" would lead to a core page they would instead get an error. Nothing major, but might as well make it as foolproof as possible IMO.
 * Note the slashes instead of colons, this makes it a lot easier. Look at Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Vehicles/Vehicle Missions, it automatically generates a mini-navigation list. Also for the technical side of things this threads the pages together, whereas with colons it treats the other bits as if they are sub-books and does not attach them to the preceding "directory" they contain like it does with the slashes. Master Thief Garrett 05:23, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * The problem with not having boss subpages is that things can be revealed too soon. Right now the table of contents lists all the boss names; this could potentially spoil it for someone who hadn't got that far. So perhaps we should at the least have the region subpages, so you'd go to "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Missions: Los Santos: Ryder". That way only by clicking through to the region page would the bosses' identities be revealed. Not ideal, but the original goal of this Wikibook was that the layout be as accidental-spoiler-free as possible. Master Thief Garrett 05:30, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)