Forum:Etc. vs et al.

Proposal
Policy currently says,

Unfortunately, this is bad advice!

"Etc." is short for the Latin et cetera, which Wikipedia roughly as "and the rest of such things". As countless grammar guides across the internet will advise, et cetera should be used only when the remainder of the list can easily be understood or is already known. Grammarly explains (emphasis mine),

I think those examples make it clear that our use of "etc." in parenthetical citations is incorrect in the vast, vast majority of cases. Here's one example from The Doctor: Some events still provided painful reminders of his role in the Time War. (TV: The Rings of Akhaten, The Time of the Doctor, etc.) Is the rest of the list "easily imaginable"? Using only the two items presented, can you extrapolate the rest? I can't, and I don't expect that most of our readers can, either. This is incorrect usage.

Thankfully, there's an easy alternative to fix the issue: "et al.", which means "others forming some group". Many grammar guides say that "et al." should only be used for lists of people, since this is common style, but there's actually no such restriction in the full Latin phrase, which can be either animate (et alii; et aliae) and inanimate (et alia). The important difference between et cetera and et alia is that the latter has no "easily imaginable" requirement. As Najawin once summarized,

It's for this reason that, despite T:CITE specifically saying never to use "et al." in our citations, the wiki uses it much more than "etc."! For instance, on The Doctor "et al." is used 15 times whereas "etc." is used only 5 times. Rather than leaving our citation system an inconsistent hodge-podge, we should reverse T:CITE's recommendations and make "et al." the official standard across the wiki. – n8 (☎) 22:05, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
to be added