Rule about correcting pages

[MT2008]

Have we ever really settled on the rules for making a correction to a page? The reason I ask is that we don't seem to have much of a consensus on when it's appropriate and when it's not.

On the one hand, we have some people (usually anonymous users) who correct a page because they think they know they're right, even though they're actually wrong. I can't count the number of times, for example, that I've seen users who tried to change a page to say that a Glock seen in a movie has to be a Glock 22 or 23 because it's being carried by an FBI Agent. Or the people who keep changing the "Bourne Supremacy" page to say that the sniper rifle used by Matt Damon is a WA 2000 (which it's not). This is why I tend to recommend that people instead use the Talk page to discuss a correction first, before it's made.

The problem is that sometimes, discussing corrections doesn't lead to changes, because the person who made the page doesn't notice, or they're just too lazy to discuss it. Somebody else may suggest that a gun is different, and they might be right, but obviously, that's not going to matter if they get ignored by whoever started the page. In which case, my method is useless.

So how do we reconcile this problem? My suggestion is that people should generally not change a page without discussing it first, but if the person who started the page ignores them, then they have the right to change it after a certain period of time. But how long should they have to wait?