Talk:2010 in Australia

Correct, or at least consistent tense needed in article

I corrected the grammar in an addition today (with an Edit summary of "Grammar"), and it was reverted with an edit comment of "What grammar problem". There were two. The one in question was that I had changed "Melbourne Heart FC plays its first match..." to "Melbourne Heart FC played its first match..." The revert drew my attention to what I see as the weird habit of writing up past events in the present tense in article like this. It's not universal. Many ARE in past tense. But what we have is a strange mixture of this odd use pf present tense for past events, and what seem to me to be correct use of past tense for past events. Maybe not everyone would agree with me that past tense is better, but I would hope that most would agree that should at least be consistent. HiLo48 (talk) 22:31, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

One might ask, why the "Melbourne Heart FC" topic alone took your interest in this to begin with? And what is the "POV" that you are concerned about in this edit For someone who calls others "obsessed" your editing patterns and apparent POV regarding Melbourne Heart are concerning. But to concentrate on your latest campaign, The "Year in Australia" articles and the Portal:Australia/News section should always be written from the point of view of the date supplied. While this may not be universally applied in this article, and should be fixed in those cases, it is nevertheless the default style for this article (and all previous years 2009 in Australia), for year articles in other countries(2009 in the United Kingdom) and for articles about years generally (2009). Do you propose changing all of these? This would be a big task. Or do you propose making the "Year in Australia" articles a special case, against the precedent used across the encyclopedia for these type of articles? If so, what makes Australia so different? Explain in detail, please. However, perhaps you would be better to take your concerns over tense to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years and find a universal solution. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 23:19, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

1. Why Melbourne Heart? Firstly, it was the most recent edit. Secondly, too many edits relating to that topic have been of very poor quality.

2. The POV bit (while quite off topic here) was about the use of the word "but". It implies that a different result would have been preferred. That's POV.

3. As I already stated, I don't strongly care which way we lean on present vs past tense. I simply seek consistency. All present tense would be much better than a mixture. HiLo48 (talk) 01:18, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I apologise for the use of the word "but", I really have no point-of-view on the matter at all, but thanks for changing it, I agree it's better without it. As far as I can see, the use of present tense referring to the day in question is pretty standard through the year articles, but every now and then someone will (not incorrectly) phrase an entry in the past tense—I've generally changed them for consistency. If you feel strongly one way or the other, or about consistency, then you should get consensus with a project or the manual of style—as Mattinbgn says it's a big task.--Canley (talk) 02:15, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Heh, ironically you actually introduced a grammatical error [1] when you edited it! --Canley (talk) 02:21, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Hey. You're right. Thanks for fixing it! I certainly don't claim perfection. HiLo48 (talk) 03:01, 11 October 2010 (UTC)