Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2009-05-29/John Carter (ER)

Where is the dispute?

 * 1) John Carter (ER)
 * 2) ER (season 8)
 * 3) ER (season 9)

Who is involved?

 * Drmargi
 * Jerkov
 * Q102josh

What is the dispute?
The Carter character is an Attending Physician as of 2002, and Season 9 and is clearly referred to as such, even though he is still the department's acting chief resident. Users Drmargi and Jerkov keep reverting my edits claiming he wasn't "hired as an attending." I tried explaining to them that an Attending Physician is a physician who has completed all medical training (internship, residency, and fellowship) but they don't listen. DrMargi claims he is a "shift doctor" but it is evident that he is a member of the staff out the hospital and NOT a moonlighter. Ergo he's an Attending.

Mediator notes
This type of dispute involving an 'in universe' fictional biography must be reoslved by references to sources. I note that the two Season artciles are currently completely unsourced and the Carter article is only sourced by a brief summary. The debate about this specific wording is less importnat than improving the references to those articles as a whole.

The only credible 'in universe' source is NBC (this excluding fan forums and blogs) - the question is what they have said about Carter's status. We should try to avoid relying on our interpretation of conversations within epsiodes or by comparison to real-world terminology. It is possible that: one of the two arguments is correct, or that NBC has been inconsistent with itself, or that NBC is consistent within itself but departs from real-world usage, or that NBC has made no explicit statement. Whichever of these holds will be determined by looking at their sources.

So clearly you have access to information about how his stauts has been described -it would be helpful to list it here in a format suach s

Season 9 episode 1  listed as Resident in cat list url =