On 12/11/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
An important lesson of Wikipedia is that people will argue to death over ANYTHING in the pursuit of Getting Things Right. See [[Talk:Prime Minister of Australia]] for the now-moot dispute over what on Earth the correct term for the leader of the party that won the last election is before he's actually sworn in as the new Prime Minister (there doesn't appear to be one), and whether the loser can still be
Really? All the papers used the term "prime minister-elect". Except for one radio host who made the unfortunate tongue slip "prime-minister erect"...
described as "incumbent" (probably).
Good question. Funny issue though, because in that week or so, there was virtually no coverage of him whatsoever, so no one else seemed to face the dilemma. But we at Wikipedia NEED TO KNOW. :)
I'd like to see our obsession with getting things right as a virtue, even when it verges on the querulous ...
It's a bit wasteful to spend so much time and effort getting things right for one week, only to have that debate become totally moot.
Steve