I concur with Serhiy and Xiang that the docs are correct as-is.  Also IMO, the proposed rewording will cause more confusion than it cures.  Since this issue hasn't previously come up in the rather long life span of the re module, it suggests that most folks are getting the understanding they need from the existing docs.

I think it is the job for regex tutorials (rather than the main docs) to show when to use "<.*?><span>" versus "<[^>]*><span>".