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
I agree with this proposl. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎  06:19, 9 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I, too, agree with this proposal, but does et. al incorporate etc.; i.e. can et. al be used in cases where the rest of the list is easily extrapolated from context? 07:20, 9 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I disagree with this proposal. I understand your reasoning about why "etc" is not the best fit, but I do not understand why you think et al. is the better alternative. We do not speak Latin, we speak English, and in English, et al. denotes lists of people. It seems misguided to replace one slightly wrong term with a somewhat more wrong term.
 * The etymology of a term or phrase isn't always the most relevant when these terms/phrases grow and evolve, take on new meanings or lose old ones.
 * Also, your example of the usage of etc/et al. on the Doctor is frankly meaningless. Although technically Tardis:Citation states that "etc" is correct, it has long been held that "et al." was correct, and there was a forum thread before the forums were kaput that was in near unanimous agreement that etc was better! It just so happens that a policy technically already agreed with the consensus, which wasn't known to us at the time. So of course our pages are going to have mixed usages, and counting them is ridiculous when I could go over there right now and change them all with a quick "ctrl + f". Not only using ourselves as a source seems to miss the point about accurate referencing, you reference something that is known to be muddled and easily editable by anyone. Someone could change etc/et al. to "Electric Boogaloo" but it doesn't suddenly mean that "Electric Boogaloo" is the correct term.


 * While "etc" may not necessarily be that helpful in when trying to list off a bunch of unrelated sources to a statement, stitching et al. on instead, in modern usage, implies that the sources are people. But in many other cases, etc is the correct term.

The Doctor's TARDIS was a time machine. (TV:, , etc.)
 * See what I mean? 14:26, 9 November 2023 (UTC)