Forum:Temporary forums/Relaxing the past-tense requirement

Proposal

The rules regarding our use of verb tenses in articles are described in Tardis:Point of view, Tardis:In-universe perspective, and related policy pages in our Manual of Style. For the most part, these rules have served us very well. However, in some areas the scope of our coverage has changed since these rules were written in 2012, resulting in awkward and confusing results in some cases. By tweaking the rules in four specific circumstances – four changes, ordered below from tamest to boldest – I hope we can improve the wiki's usability while still retaining the style that has guided us from the beginning.

Real-world individuals

On our articles for real-world cast and crew, Tardis:Out-of-universe perspective wisely suggests that we avoid sentences that require the present tense. For instance, rather than introducing Mat King with "Mat King is a British director", which future editors would have to manually update upon his (hopefully distant) death, T:OOU instructs us to instead choose an alternative formulation like "Mat King directed the episode Hide in Doctor Who series 7".

However, due to the policy's heavy emphasis on the burden of changing the tense on pages, this has led to the misconception that real-world pages for cast and crew are forbidden from using present tense. As a result, some of our cast and crew pages introduce their subjects with the format "[Actor] was a British actor" – implying that they've died!

T:OOU should be rewritten to emphasise that using past tense in a way that seemingly announces a real-world person's death is at least as undesirable a failure case as using present tense in a way that imposes on future editors. In cases where it absolutely cannot be avoided without creating an inaccuratei mplication, present tense should be allowed in real-world pages and in the real-world "behind the scenes" sections of in-universe pages.

Future material

We've always covered material on series pages like series 14 (Doctor Who), and since our spoiler policy thread, we've also started creating articles for future stories, future cast and crew, and – on spoiler subpages – future appearances of returning cast.

However, due to policy and longstanding precedent regarding tenses, we continue to use past tense on all of these pages: for instance, "Series 14 was a series of Doctor Who", or "[REDACTED] portrayed the Fifteenth Doctor". Referring to future releases in this way is confusing at best and actively misleading at worst.

I propose that we change our rules to allow the use of future tense when referring to unreleased stories. The same applies to series pages: on Doctor Who we already begin the lead with "Doctor Who is" rather than "Doctor Who was", because it's an ongoing series with future releases. That said, we should continue to use past tense when referring to stories and series which are fully released.

Present tense in leads

One silly-looking result of our tense requirements is the use of past tense when it comes to introducing common words from the real world, such as "An arm was a body part" or "Yellow was a colour". When Wookieepedia does this, they at least have an excuse: Star Wars begins with "A long time ago…" But Doctor Who has given us no such affordance, and as a result our adoption of a strict "end of universe" perspective is both awkward and confusing.

We could resolve this awkwardness by allowing the use of present tense, only in the first sentence of an article, if and only if that sentence is the definition of a word present in dictionaries in the real world. This would allow us to come out and say that "Yellow is a colour" and "An arm is a body part", while still keeping the past tense in Doctor Who-specific terms like time rift.

Real-world perspective in leads

On Samsung's Doctor Who channel, the slideshow of Doctor incarnations gives three facts about each, the three facts that viewers are most likely to want to know.

1. Their incarnation number.
2. The actor name.
3. The years they were the main Doctor.

And yet, this last key detail isn't findable anywhere on our incarnation pages!

One flexible potential fix for this, and other similar situations where our in-universe coverage style prevents us from highlighting important real-world information about a major character or concept, would be to put a short out-of-universe box at the top of their pages, the space currently usually occupied by cleanup templates. On Jo Grant it might say,

Jo Grant was portrayed by Katy Manning and was the Third Doctor's main companion from Terror of the Autons in season 8 (1971) to The Green Death in season 10 (1973).

I'm still workshopping this idea, but I mention it in this thread because, of course, it would require an exception to the past tense requirement on those pages in the case of actors who are currently portraying a character. Looking forward to feedback! – n8 (☎) 21:59, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

I agree with real-world individuals and future material, but not with the present tense in leads. Jumping about in tense would be needlessly confusing and invites questions like whether we speak about Traken in the past or present tense given that we've seen it destroyed. If in the past tense, why not for Earth as well given that we've seen that destroyed too? As for real-world perspective in leads, I'm largely ambivalent. Jack "BtR" Saxon ☎ 18:55, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I support all of these proposals, although I agree with Jack that for articles like Earth we should stick to past tense. Pluto2☎ 19:24, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I support allowing present tense in real-world pages, and requiring future-tense on "future releases" pages. However, I feel the "ledes" section is incredibly major and not really within the scope of this thread, and for that reason I think we should wait for thread on "RW-POV ledes" to allow the extra nuance that they can be in present tense. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 19:44, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Personally, my views on real world leads are complicated.

In theory, I fully, 100% support them; I remember, a while back, trying to figure out what relevance Radagast had in J. R. R. Tolkien's original The Hobbit novel; so I went to lotr.fandom.com to look into the matter. The Wiki, being written in the same in-universe perspective as this very Wiki... completely failed to answer my question. This frustrated me, so I went over to Wikipedia's article on Radagast, where the answer was presented to me in the second sentence.

"Radagast the Brown is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. A wizard and associate of Gandalf, he appears briefly in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales."Radagast on Wikipedia

Now looking at my problem, and how it applies to this Wiki, I cannot even imagine just how many times Not Wes have come to the Wiki, looking for similar information, only to be disserviced and then going to other websites such as Wikipedia. This is why I feel we need more concise and easy to access, real world information present on all articles.

However.

I strongly reject the idea of having an "out of universe box" on the top of articles. Just no. With the tops of articles, they are already cluttered with templates like {{character stub}}, {{ImageLink}}, etc. {{You may}}, {{for}}, {{dab page}} are the worst cases of templates at the top of pages, and while their clunky appearance will be fixed if converted to hatnotes, these will take up a lot of room at the top of articles. And this isn't even factoring in @Bongo50's tab template for subpages! We absolutely do not need another template at the top of articles. Additionally, I feel being limited to just three sentences will remove any ability to write with nuanced details, or even if we want to include last regular appearance dates, multiple actors, or characters retroactively named or conflated, etc. And this won't even allow us to say if the character we're talking about was only a minor character in their debut story but was expanded upon in later stories or adaptions. Therefore, the only possible soloution I see is to have completely out of universe leads.

This being said, it doesn't mean we have to completely redo every single article lead. I still feel they should contain a brief summary of their biographical details, but if it is to be done from an out-of-universe perspective we can, for example, talk about the conflicting accounts of the Eighth Doctor's life with an additional layer of detail than something like "Leading a life of great temporal complexity, the Eighth Doctor was so frequently involved in time paradoxes and parallel universes that it was impossible to know with certainty how the major epochs of his existence fitted together."; we can briefly detail Eight's main series (e.g. EDAs, DWM comics, Big Finish) and how they all intersect (and not) and then explain that certain stories (e.g. Zagreus) attempts to reconcile the discrepancies.

Otherwise, I agree with @Jack "BtR" Saxon about implementing tenses on real world people pages and on pages about future releases. I am a little unsure about using present tense on pages like yellow and arm. In understand where this idea is coming from, and it does make sense, but on the flipside @Jack "BtR" Saxon does have a good point about potential confusion.

If needs be, I can draft what I feel would be best for an out-of-universe lead.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

19:53, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I support everything here, but would like to hold off on the "real-world perspective in leads" until we have a more solid game plan. Personally, I think having another weird box in the opening to pages is a little off-putting. I'd rather have the info to the side, like Template:Doctors. OS25🤙☎️ 20:00, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I largely support this proposal, although I am against changing past tense to present/future tense on series/story/anthology pages because, if these are already in past tense all the time it saves us, as editors, the trouble of having to change them once they’re released. It just works better that way. Danniesen ☎ 20:04, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't see that as too much of a worry, personally. In the vast majority of cases, it would only requires minor changes when a story is released and it's not as if we don't have to go and remove spoiler tags anyway. Jack "BtR" Saxon ☎ 20:29, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I support the use of present tense on real world pages. I reject having an out of universe box at the top of pages for the same reason (too cluttered) as Epsilon stated above. I would also reject the use of present tense in leads on in universe pages, including arm or yellow. I feel use of the word "is" somewhat merges the DWU and the real world, implying that the two are one and the same; it implies that we have a first hand account. I feel that use of the past tense, on the other hand, implies that we are relaying somebody else's account, whether that be the account of a character or a narrator. This is something that we were told about the DWU, not something we have a first hand experience of. I would also agree with Jack that jumping about with tenses would be confusing. 66 Seconds ☎ 23:00, 6 April 2023 (UTC)