Talk:Minister

''How should one refer to Mazarin, Richelieu, Fleury, etc. First minister, chief minister, prime minister, in French? LirQ

Ahem. "Notable Secretaries and Ministers"??? Should this be "Notable politicians, except those who happen to never have been ministers or secretaries"?

Unless someone gives me a good reason not to, I'm going to remove that part of the article. Ludicrously long, incomplete, in the wrong place, redundant; pick at least three. If you really want something like this, cross references and "what links here" is the way to go.

-- Pde 06:20, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I object, a list of persons who were ministers is quite reasonable. LirQ


 * Okay, objection noted. Would you care to refute some of my arguments? -- Pde 14:54, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, you haven't made any arguments. "Ludicrously long" is not an argument, the wiki is very long (should we delete it too?). Incomplete...should we delete the whole wiki? In the wrong place? You want to put it somewhere else? Redundant? Is there another list somewhere? Lirath Q. Pynnor


 * Another list? Yes, there are two of them.  (1) A list of noteworthy politicians, which is actually a more useful thing than a list of ministers, because it's almost identical but very slightly more complete.  (2) The "what links here" button.  I would encourage you, instead of putting names on this page, to add discrete links from the entries for actual ministers.  Then, a user who wants such a list can have it generated for them automatically.


 * To illustrate my point about length/incompleteness, I'll take a place and time period about which I'm moderately knowledgeable -- late 20th century Australia. Now, which ministers should be listed there?  I'd say, at least:  all the prime ministers (Harold Holt, John Gorton, Billy McMahon, Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard), then many other noteworthy Federal ministers (eg John McEwen, Don Chipp, Lionel Murphy, Jim Cairns, Barry Jones, Gareth Evans, John Button, Carmen Lawrence, Peters Peter Costello and Peter Reith, Phillip Ruddock, and more), plus a bunch of state politicans.  All of those people deserve (at least short) Wikipedia entries, so why shouldn't they be listed here?  Now, multiply that by 180 countries and much longer time periods.

What links here is a moddled list of everything linking here. There is no reason not to create a list of every person who has been a government minister. Why not? You think it'll take up too much harddrive space? Ill send jimbo a couple gigs if he really wants. Lirath Q. Pynnor


 * Well, "what links here" does admitedly have other stuff in it (at least until Wikipedia has metadata :), but it's still perfectly serviceable for people who want a list of ministers noteworthy enought to have their own entries. And I never said I was concerned about space usage -- it's the amount of time and effort required to make a list like that even vaguely complete, and until you've done that, it just looks silly.


 * I also still maintain that there is basically no use for a list of notable ministers, as opposed to a list of notable politicians.


 * Ultimately, I don't really mind if you work on the list, my POV is just that it looks very unprofessional on the "Minister" page. -- Pde


 * cough*workinprogress*cough*Lirath Q. Pynnor


 * No problem. I'll offer you a bet of sorts: I'd bet that wikipedia will have metadata support before the list of ministers can fairly be said to no longer be "work in progress".  The loser must make a 50 Euro donation to the Wikimedia foundation. -- Pde 22:21, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Hm, following the discussion on Talk:List of ministers, I redirected List of ministers here (before reading above discussion, please excuse, you may want to reverse the move).
 * As in Talk:Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, it may be more helpful to include a list here, but it shouldn't be forgotten to cross-reference the other lists.
 * If you want to try to develop more selective lists, it's probably worth doing it, but it may be easier to develop specific articles like Foreign Minister -- User:Docu


 * Docu, why have any of this stuff on the Minister page at all? Lists of cabinet members should be linked from Cabinet, but not Minister. We shouldn't all be tripping over each other just because Lir is silly. -- Pde

I hadn't followed the above discussion, but only read Talk:List of ministers (mea culpa) where it was agreed that it's better not to have the new page, and rather include the incumbents on lists by country. Besides, the list from Minister doesn't just disappear by being on List of ministers.

Whether or not you want to include (lists of) cabinet members depends on if (the 2nd part of) minister is to be like Chancellor or rather like foreign minister. --User:Docu

"To minister is to preach or speak to a congregation, Crowd or individual, Mainly used to guide the followers / Hearers in a direction."

According to common internet dictionaries, 'to minister can have a number of different meanings which are used more frequently: In my opinion Wictionary would be a more appropriate place to elaborate on the meanings of the verb, instead of doing so on a disambiguation page. If you really want to do so, go ahead but then please list the more common verb meanings as well. However, links to clergy and politicians are covered by the listed nouns anyway. --Nikai 14:40, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)Italic text''
 * to work as a minister
 * to attend to the wants and needs of others
 * to perform the duties of a member of the clergy