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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.
- Their incarnation number.
- The actor name.
- 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,
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.
- 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. 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)
I agree with real-world individuals and future material, but I'm iffy on the rest. Time God Eon ☎ 00:09, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
- It's been great watching the discussion here so far; thanks everyone for the thoughts. Just to answer something Jack "BtR" Saxon said, the "present tense in first sentence" would specifically not apply to non-generic nouns like Earth or Traken. That's what I was fumbling at with the "present in dictionaries in the real world" condition. – n8 (☎) 01:08, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
- I, quite frankly, don't see the point. I think our current policy is perfectly sensible. With respect to ledes, however, I strongly reject the idea that they should be written from an OOU perspective. A small box like the one Nate suggests might be a workable compromise if people think this is a good idea, with 2-3 sentences. But I'm very much against anything past that. Najawin ☎ 04:06, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
- I also strongly reject the "present tense in leads" proposal. Looking at it from an admin / enforcement of policy point of view this would be an absolute nightmare to police, it would open up countless cans of worms of people asking 'well why is it present here but not here'.
- We already have mostly clearly explained reasons why we have it all in the past tense, this would needlessly complicate things.
- I also agree with Epsilon that we do not need more templates, and that limiting to a few sentences would force us to focus on only one element like their performance in the Jo Grant example above. Which would go against our T:VS of not counting one story / medium above another.
- I agree that T:OOU needs some re-writing to emphasise how to write an article in the past tense without implying their demise. —Tangerineduel / talk 04:49, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm suddenly realizing that, for some reason, this forum doesn't discuss one of the weirdest things we do on this site when it comes to tense. I understand it's too late now to just throw it in, but I thought I'd mention it for the next time we do something like this.
Stories, when discussed as pieces of media, out of universe, should be spoken of in the present tense. This is, if they still exist in a way that can be observed. We currently do not do this, and it's terrible. For instance, the opening to The Horns of Nimon states:
- The Horns of Nimon was the fifth and final serial of season 17 of Doctor Who. The original intention was not for Horns to be the last story, only becoming the case when Shada was cancelled. The story marked David Brierley's final vocal appearance as K9 as John Leeson returned to the role from The Leisure Hive onwards. Moreover, it was the final story to be broadcast, in full or in part, during the 1970s and the first during the 1980s.
This is grammatically incorrect. This is what the opening should look like:
- The Horns of Nimon is the fifth and final serial of season 17 of Doctor Who. The original intention was not for Horns to be the last story, only becoming the case when Shada was cancelled. The story marks David Brierley's final vocal appearance as K9 after John Leeson returned to the role from The Leisure Hive onwards. Moreover, it was the final story to be broadcast, in full or in part, during the 1970s and the first during the 1980s.
You'll note that whenever the story is mentioned as something which can be observed, the present tense is used. This is because we are discussing something which currently exists. The only exception to this which should be made is when this can't be said, such as for stage plays, real world events, and specific lost media cases (Worlds in Time). Past tense is also used when we're, essentially, discussing an event the the story was involved in (like being broadcast for the first time).
Pretend we're discussing a baseball in a museum. "The baseball was thrown as the World Series. It has a red stripe." Past tense for former event involved, present tense for descriptor of thing-that-currently-exists.
The point is that saying "The Horns of Nimon was the fifth and final serial of series 17" implies that it doesn't exist anymore. And we literally only have pages written this way because of an extremely outdated fear of the present tense! OS25🤙☎️ 22:32, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
- I think I support this change (as well as changing to future tense for stories that have yet to be released). The more I think about it, though, the more I think we should not change tenses for in-universe articles, though. Although I do think that the idea of a small OOU lede above the IU lede for some pages might be good. Pluto2☎ 22:39, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
- But it is a story that keeps happening. If I put it on my TV right now, it's happening as I watch it. I'm not going to, but I could.
- Technically it depends on what "the serial" is. Whether "the serial" is the original production, the original transmission, a particular idea embodied in a particular mind, a recurring string of symbols (or sets of strings of symbols) in the world with shared characteristics, a sort of cultural artefact that evolves over time, or some sort of platonic ideal. Some of these should be tensed in the past, some in the present, some either the past or the present, and one perhaps not at all. Yes it's confusing. But it's not like the option chosen is insane. Identifying "the serial" with the original transmission and/or the original production is a reasonable thing to do, and would entail to tense phrasings in the past. (Probably the most correct is to not tense things at all, but good luck doing that in English. (inb4 this offhand comment starts an argument)) Najawin ☎ 02:40, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- No I think you have a point, it falls under the "lost media" thing I mentioned.
- For instance, yes a BBC website which is now offline should be past tense, as should Worlds in Time. But we have to keep in mind that all DW serials exist in some form, even if just as audio. I would like to point out that the Wikipedia pages on "lost" serials, such as The Power of the Daleks, do indeed speak in the present tense.
(Oh, the argument I mentioned was more likely to be with Scrooge or Nate. The offhand comment in the parenthetical is what I was joking about there.) Najawin ☎ 06:55, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- I did end up creating an example of an out-of-universe lead over at User:Epsilon the Eternal/OOU leads, if anyone is interested.
Muriel Frost cameoed, albeit not named, in the 2005 Doctor Who television story Aliens of London, where she was unceremoniously murdered by the Slitheen family along with other alien experts in 10 Downing Street; her appearance in this story was made overt in two short stories — Operation London and Number Ten — on the website U.N.I.T. created to tie-in with Aliens of London and World War Three. Indeed, it had even been originally intended that the Ninth Doctor would directly address Muriel Frost before her death, but this line of dialogue was cut.
- As OOU leads are such a large (and contentious) change, I really want to appeal for this to be covered in a seperate thread, not permanently shut down here. Is that okay with the admins? 19:54, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- Just commenting on the proposal itself, I would strongly oppose out-of-universe leads for DWU topics, but happily support future-tense for real world subjects, at least so long as we employ a tagging system like {{as of}}. Something like {{tense|d=November 2015}} or {{tense|d=November 2015|will be}}, either in-line or for the whole article.
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 20:30, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
Conclusion
It seems there is broad consensus in favour of relaxing T:OOU regarding the across-the-board application of past tense. Indeed, User:OttselSpy25 rightly points out that "David Tennant was an actor" was never what the policy recommended; rather, we were advised to route around such tense-sensitive phrasing by saying "David Tennant portrayed the Tenth Doctor on television starting in…". But the proliferation of "was" cases proves, I think, that we cannot rely on such linguistic jackanapery always being possible. Although they should be minimised for the sake of saving future editing, it is now permitted to write about real-world subjects in the present tense when appropriate, most importantly for human beings who are still alive.
Likewise, authorising future tense for upcoming/spoilery topics is entirely sensible and is now allowed. As a corollary, if it is indeed possible, {{spoiler}} should be fitted with date variables modelled after {{as of}} as suggested by User:SOTO. That way, we can keep an automatic maintenance table, and always see when tense updates are past due. (Given that I don't think we'll need it on any pages that don't already bear the {{Spoiler}} tag, it seems wiser to put it there than to create a new template. But if this proves technically challenging, don't let this ruling stand in the way of doing it via a different template, of course.)
With regards to leads of the form "The Horns of Nimon was…", I find myself sympathetic to User:Najawin's argument that this is not incorrect, nor even particularly arbitrary. It would be one thing to say "Alien Bodies was a novel", and that sort of phrasing should be avoided. But when we use phrasings such as "The Horns of Nimon was the final broadcast episode of Season 17", or "Alien Bodies was the sixth novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series", it's clear that the "narrative voice" of the Wiki is placing the work at issue within the historical context of its initial release. Season 17 was a one-time, ongoing cultural event, as much as it is a still-existing collection of stories you can pop in your DVD player at will. We shouldn't ban referring to stories in the present tense when appropriate, but the current widespread format is also valid, and there should be no massive campaign to "correct" it.
Finally, I think nobody will be surprised by my conclusion that real-world/present-tense leads do not pass, although in accordance with consensus, the topic is allowed to be discussed again at greater length as its own bespoke thread in the future. With regards to present-tense leads for the likes of yellow, I frankly do not see the point. Yes, people on Twitter (and other not-wes) occasionally make fun of us for it, but people on Twitter occasionally make fun of any and everything. It's not a good reason to do anything. It amuses them, but I don't see how it can ever mislead or hinder them in their browsing of the Wiki, so it doesn't impinge on our usefulness as a Wiki.
And in truth, talk of end-of-the-universe perspectives and the like sort of bury the lede. It's perfectly normal for the narrative voice of a work of fiction to use the past tense across the board, even without a particular sci-fi-slanted "point of view". I might write a contemporary detective novel set in Paris where the narrator says things like "Paris was too large a city for the Inspector to have any hope of finding the fugitive again"; or indeed, "The Inspector didn't like the place; it was too yellow. Yellow was a dour, insalubrious colour, and men of taste rarely liked it". When it's done in such a context, no one screenshots it and jeers that hey, look, Murder at the Arc de Triomphe secretly takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where Paris and the colour yellow no longer exist! Mind blown![1] If it doesn't bother people there, it shouldn't bother people here, and it's not our fault if they can't get over themselves.
More serious perhaps is the matter of our run-on-sentence-laden in-universe ledes which fail to communicate essential BTS information effectively. But that's very much outside the scope of a thread titled for merely "relaxing the past-tense requirement". For what it's worth, I find myself more sympathetic than not to the idea of an OOU "header" that complements the in-universe lede without replacing it; yes, yes, one more template, clutter, etc., but consider that mainteance templates like {{cleanup}} are "clutter" because the vast majority of readers and indeed editors are not going to act on their content, nor even consider doing so, so it's just an irrelevant hurdle they have to scroll past. It wouldn't be clutter in at all the same way if the box contained important information directed at casual readers, now would it? But as I said, this is way, way out from the scope of this thread and should be reviewed in a different one.
As always, thanks to everyone who participated!
Footnotes
- ↑ Okay, as soon as I typed it out, I remembered that very silly people sometimes use the past tense of 1984's epilogue to argue a similar point that the Party "secretly" falls at some point in the book's canonical future. But it's rather daft when they do that, and besides, there are extenuating circumstances.
— Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 01:14, 28 April 2023 (UTC)