User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1451563-20180913002703/@comment-24894325-20190109110137

This thread IS to discuss policy. However, by Tardis:You are bound by current policy, the current policy remains in force unless this debate is concluded (by an admin) with a decision to change it. You erroneously assumed that this thread tries to introduce "they" to the wiki. In fact, the opposite is true. The use of they has been decided several years ago in Thread:152896. Everything written in the last post of that thread, including the note from SOTO is the current policy and must be adhered to.

This thread is, indeed, about changing this current policy of using "they" in referring to the Doctor and other multigendered individuals (Time Lord or not). It appears that the OP was under the same erroneous impression as you, which explains why your reading of the OP does not give you a current picture of the wiki policies. This is why, as an admin, it is my job to clarify it to you and all participants.

If you believe that the current usage of "they" has to be changed, you need to provide an easily implementable mechanism of choosing another pronoun, that relies on in-universe sources. The argument that, out of four 3rd person pronouns, "they" magically makes things unreadable has been discussed before the current policy has been decided and, therefore, should not be brought to this discussion by T:POINT (even though it has already been addressed upthread). In order to change the current policy, one has to provide new arguments in favour of changing.

Off-the-cuff remarks not supported by persuasive in-universe justifications, in fact, refuted my multiple in-universe quotes provided above, will rightfully be ignored by the closing admin. Thus, I strongly discourage users from issuing them as they do not help anyone and make the work of the closing admin unnecessarily harder.

To further address the concerns of User:DW114, they mostly stem with their unfamiliarity with this wiki's policies (incidentally, one of such policies is to use "they" referring to persons whose gender is unknown to the poster, which is the most common situation among editors). When DW114 write "should be English (either UK/US standard, take your pick)", they go against the established policy of this wiki to use British English. Their comment about in-universe information being irrelvant to the discussion is equally misinformed as in-universe information always takes prevalence over the real world as per T:NO RW.

Finally, as for "obscure random dialect", I strongly recommend DW114 to take their time to read all the threads linked to above. This wiki can boast of quite educated editors who do proper research before posting. In course of such research done in earlier threads, the use of "they" in standard English has been found to go several hundred years back. There are sources and discussions galore. I encourage DW114 to familiarise themselves with this accumulated knowledge before extending this already extremely long thread to the point that no admin will ever be able to close it.