Template talk:Infobox Canada electoral district

Additional info

District profiles

Elections BC sets the standard for electoral district information.

• Federal electoral district profiles - includes Electoral district number, Area, Population, Number of electors on list, Major census subdivisions (municipalities), Adjacent electoral districts
• BC electoral district profiles - extensive and excellent data (in PDF), and election results
• Alberta electoral district profiles - only lists incumbent and locations (no demographic data)
• Saskatchewan electoral district maps and 2007 election results (PDF) - no demographic data, but results contain number of electors
• Manitoba electoral district maps and 2007 election results (no demographic data)
• Ontario electoral district maps, elector counts, 2007 election results, and district lists - not much demographic data
• Quebec electoral districts (good info), maps, election results (2006 results contain number of electors, voter turnout); also provides a list of toponyms
• PEI electoral districts, election results, members (district links don't seem to work, though), elector count (PDF); no demographic data
• Nova Scotia electoral district maps, election results (2006 results), election stats
• New Brunswick electoral district maps, MLAs by district, 2006 election results (and [1])
• Newfoundland and Labrador district reports (see 2006), MapGuide (QuickSearch at top will list MHAs, districts to the right), electors by district (as of 5 Oct 2007)
• Yukon electoral district maps, Boundary Commission, 2006 election results (PDF)
• Northwest Territories constituency maps, and 2003 election results
• Nunavut 2004 election results, constituencies, Elections Nunavut

Other sources

• electoral district descriptions - including maps
• Constituency Profile
• electionprediction.org
• CBC Canada votes, and provincial elections too; 2003 and later, or so it appears

Additional features

Add the following:

• add "riding dissolved" field, or something similar (per Bearcat's suggestion)
• eliminate MP/MLA field if riding is defunct (per Bearcat's suggestion)
• determine how to handle demographic info for defunct ridings (it'll become increasingly irrelevant)
• ensure status test is more rigorous (currently, it may be set to anything, and the template will accordingly set up the appropriate fed/prov section as if it's valid)
• improve demo-cd and demo-csd fields so user need only type in the community or region name (eg - "Richmond Hill") instead of the article name (eg - "Richmond Hill, Ontario")
• automatically calculate population density if population and area are given
• automatically retrieve district name; over-ride with "name" attribute
• ensure number of district electors is less than district population
• handle creation/abolishment versus first/last election; these don't always match (see Neepawa (electoral district))
• handle case of districts which span multiple periods (see Yukon (electoral district), which was abolished for a brief period, then re-created)
• suppress party affiliation and colours when province is set to Nunavut or Northwest Territories, and the riding is territorial (federal ridings are similar to the provinces)
• population density field should be rounded to 2 decimal places for territories and other low-density districts, instead of the default 1 place
• ensure that province is correctly specified

Error conditions

• check that fed-created is greater than fed-abolished, if both are defined
• check that prov-created is greater than prov-abolished, if both are defined
• check that fed-rep-party-link article page exists, if defined
• check that prov-rep-party-link article page exists, if defined
• check that fed-rep-link article page exists, if defined
• check that prov-rep-party-link article page exists, if defined
• check that fed-last is greater than fed-first, if both are defined
• check that prov-last is greater than prov-first, if both are defined

Feedback

The documentation's good. I made a couple of minor adjustments; you referred to the federal level of government a couple of times in provincial tags. I'd also like to mention that according to the test page, the current version is visibly displaying an extraneous {{ #if: active | under the map and in the federal status field. I realize this is probably a temporary artifact related to my suggestion that certain fields should be hidden if the status is flagged as defunct, but I thought I should mention it anyway just in case. Bearcat 20:43, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I was working on that as you were typing this message. I had added fed-rep-link and prov-rep-link to the template, and was testing for their existence, but forgot to close out the conditional. It's been fixed. Thanks for spotting the doc errors. As you can tell, I employed the ol' "copy and paste" method a few times. Mindmatrix 20:46, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

It appears that it may not work for Nunavut and the NWT. Neither of them have political parties and use Consensus government which messes up the incumbent section. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 18:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Each of the federal districts in the territories should be fine. The territorial districts can be handled with a clause in the template that would suppress the display of party affiliation and colours if the province field is set to Nunavut or Northwest Territories. It should be fairly easy to implement. Mindmatrix 20:37, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I've now implemented the change. Mindmatrix 21:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

That appears to work now. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 01:45, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Notes about parser functions

I've clearly mis-read the documentation for parser functions. Things that need to be fixed:

• conditional for (demo-pop > 0) and (demo-electors > 0)
• conditional for (demo-area > 0)

For some reason, #ifexpr: is not behaving as I expected it to, and #if lets everything through so long as it it not an empty string (in particular, expressions that evaluate to 0 are true). I'm missing the obvious. Mindmatrix 05:10, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Resolved by using a different method. Mindmatrix 05:25, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Spacing issues

There are four extraneous <br /> tags in the rendered page, causing a gap immediately after the image; it seems they were introduced in this edit, which added four error-checking expressions. Removing newlines between if blocks has eliminated two of those (see this), but a clear (and annoying) gap remains. Mindmatrix 15:48, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Resolved by moving the error notices to the bottom of the table, though the cause of the problem was not identified. Since the gap does not display at the bottom, I'm leaving it like this. (Actually, the br tags aren't even rendered in the resultant page, so ParserFunctions is doing something quirky.) Mindmatrix 15:28, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

There is still one issue with spacing, in which a district is defined with no fed-status (ie - no federal district component). The routines for fed-district add one br tag when parsed and rendered empty, giving a small gap after the image. I'll have to investigate why that happens. Mindmatrix 17:49, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

NDP

THere seems to be this weird thing going on whereby you can't put in "New Democratic Party", but only "NDP", which is automatically linked to NDP, which is a disambiguation page. Is there a way of fixing this so that the correct article name is linked so that the reader isn't taken to the wrong place? Ground Zero | t 23:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Somewhat similarly, adding this infobox to a page causes it to show as linking to Independent which is another disambiguation page. The parameter fed-rep-party-link can be populated with 'Independent (politician)' and handle it correctly, but it doesn't seem to solve the issue. I'm stumped. Any ideas? --AndrewHowse (talk) 16:43, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

For purposes of the template, all parties use a long-form and short-form name. The short-form names are used on templates such as {{Canadian politics/party colours/Liberal}}, which are used by the template to format the colour bar beside the representative's name and party. The short-form is also used to display the visible link to the party. The long-form name is only used to pipe to the correct article for a party if there is a need for disambiguation, or if the short-form name is not the official title for an article about the party on Wikipedia. In both cases mentioned above, there should be settings for both fed-rep-party and fed-rep-party-link, like so:

| fed-rep-party = Independent

| fed-rep-party-link = Independent (politician)

and

| fed-rep-party = NDP

| fed-rep-party-link = New Democratic Party

To automatically handle all party short-form and long-form names, both federally and provincially, would make the template obnoxiously complicated; using fed-rep-party-link and prov-rep-party-link solves the problem with much less effort. Is there a way I can update the documentation that can clarify this, because it seems I haven't done a good job of it. Mindmatrix 17:31, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Aside: it seems I caused some of the confusion, since I added the template to some articles without using fed-rep-party-link = Independent (politician) (for example, in this edit to the Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier electoral district article. Sorry about that. Mindmatrix 17:34, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback; I don't think the fed-rep-party-link is quite doing what I hoped it would. Even when there's an explicit value for a non-disambiguation page, it still shows as linked to the dab page. See for example User:AndrewHowse/canadatest, where I simply copied the whole infobox call from the Portneuf-Jacques Cartier page. Special:Whatlinkshere/Independent still shows a link from my user subpage. It could be a bug in the analysis of the links, of course. --AndrewHowse (talk) 18:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

There are a number of reasons this could happen. One is that the links page is either cached in your browser (not likely, since I see the same thing), or on Wikipedia servers (quite possible, but not likely either). The template itself should not be the cause of the problem, since the conditional expression that produces the link is quite trivial. (The specific code is: {{ #ifexist: {{{fed-rep-party-link}}} | [[ {{{fed-rep-party-link}}} | {{{fed-rep-party}}} ]] }}, which means "create a link to the article fed-rep-party-link, with title fed-rep-party, if the article fed-rep-party-link exists in Wikipedia.) I've taken a look at the source of your test page (that is, the HTML produced, not the wiki text), and the template is formatting as expected.

However, it appears that in the head of the document, a keywords meta field lists both Independent (politician) and Independent, so the problem may lie with the way MediaWiki parses this. I just edited my own test file (see User:Mindmatrix/beta), and I get the same thing with Liberal Party of Canada and Liberal. Browsing through Special:Whatlinkshere/Liberal, I'm now fairly certain that MediaWiki's generation of meta keywords is at fault here. (Specifically, whatever algorithm is generating the keywords is also adding an entry to the MediaWiki internal links database table.) I don't think filing a MediaWiki bug is wothwhile. "Fixing" this template isn't worth the time, either. Mindmatrix 18:46, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, there is something quirky going on, though. If you look at the HTML source for my test page, a keyword for Newfoundland general election, 1841 shows up. That shouldn't happen, so it may be an issue with ParserFunctions instead of the keywords algorithm. Mindmatrix 18:54, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that last is coming from your theta-box for Champlain.

| prov-abolished =

| prov-election-first = 1841

| prov-election-last = 1867

My test page has an 1867 date in it with a similar effect in the keyword list. --AndrewHowse (talk) 19:30, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it certainly is coming from there; however, the template doesn't generate the corresponding HTML source in the viewable area, so the question is: why are these keywords being generated by the ParserFunctions, when the corresponding HTML is not? That is, a link to "Newfoundland general election, 1841" doesn't appear in the HTML source, or in any clickable link on the page, but it does appear as a keyword. Since templates don't control what happens within the "head" of an HTML page, I'm certain this is not a flaw in this template's design. (I did find a few issues regarding the display of election dates for defunct districts, though, which have now been fixed.) Mindmatrix 01:14, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Apparently, a new parser has been coded (see the Signpost article). Forcing its use on an article with this template (instead of using the old parser) actually produces better results. For example, on the Champlain (Province_of_Canada) article, compare the keyword meta information using the old parser with that generated with the new parser. Here they are:

• old: meta name="keywords" content="Champlain (Province of Canada),Newfoundland general election, 1841,Province of Canada general election, 1841,Newfoundland general election, 1867,Province of Canada general election, 1867,1841,1843,1867,1st Parliament of the Province of Canada,2nd Parliament of the Province of Canada,3rd Parliament of the Province of Canada"
• new: meta name="keywords" content="Champlain (Province of Canada),Province of Canada general election, 1841,Province of Canada general election, 1867,1841,1843,1867,1st Parliament of the Province of Canada,2nd Parliament of the Province of Canada,3rd Parliament of the Province of Canada,4th Parliament of the Province of Canada,5th Parliament of the Province of Canada"

This is better, but still suffers from a few bugs (essentially, the same problem, but more refined). There's nothing I can do from the template level, apart from removing chunks of it, to fix this situation. Mindmatrix 16:22, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I've left a message at the preprocessor migration talk page about this. Mindmatrix 17:06, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Dead links

The profile and map links generated from the district number no longer work. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 02:42, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed that. I can't seem to get any link to the elections.ca Electoral Districts Database website to work properly. It seems to redirect to a "TooBusy" script, but it has been doing that for a months now. I'll try to find suitable replacement links. Mindmatrix 18:56, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi, can someone with permission to this change:

|label9 = District webpage |data9 = {{#if:{{{fed-district-number|}}}|[http://www.elections.ca/Scripts/vis/Profile?L=e&ED={{{fed-district-number}}}&EV=41&EV_TYPE=1&PROV=CA&PROVID=99&QID=-1&PAGEID=29 profile], [http://www.elections.ca/res/cir/maps2/mapprov.asp?map={{{fed-district-number}}} map]}}

to:

|label9 = District webpage |data9 = {{#if:{{{fed-district-number|}}}|[https://www.elections.ca/Scripts/vis/Profile?L=e&ED={{{fed-district-number}}}&EV=53 profile], [https://www.elections.ca/Scripts/vis/Map?L=e&ED={{{fed-district-number}}}&EV=53 map]}}

you can test it out yourself if you want

https://www.elections.ca/Scripts/vis/Profile?L=e&ED=35088&EV=53

https://www.elections.ca/Scripts/vis/Map?L=e&ED=35088&EV=53 --JordanKlooster (talk) 04:42, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

I’ve taken the liberty of prepending to the above request {{Edit template-protected}} so that template editors and/or administrators will be flagged to @JordanKlooster’s request. Let’s hope it gets done soon. We’re in the middle of an election and the links are not working correctly. Thanks! — SpikeToronto 06:48, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

UPDATE: @JordanKlooster: The requested changes were made here, and failed. The changes were subsequently reverted here. — SpikeToronto 07:23, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @SpikeToronto for trying it for me. for some reason the EV=99 changed to EV=53 now, something weird is going on with how they're handling the website. Would you mind trying it again now? I changed the links above. JordanKlooster (talk) 20:42, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

@JordanKlooster:  Fixed.^(verify) Awesome, Jordan! Thank you so much for making that happen. It’s terrific to have this fixed, even if we are coming down to the wire. Thanks! — SpikeToronto 04:05, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Map images

Hmm is there a way to fix the image in articles that try to use a map? All of the Calgary ridings have a screwed up image because of this (see here for example). TastyCakes (talk) 17:27, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

We can link the images without using the imagemap function, like so:

| image = Calgary-fed-el-2006-Center.png

This would also require a caption indicating that it is, in this case, Calgary Centre with respect to other electoral districts in Calgary. I'm not updating the infobox to handle imagemaps, but if someone else wants to do so, without breaking other functionality, by all means do so. Otherwise, the imagemaps should probably be deleted, and the formatting I've indicated above should be used instead. Mindmatrix 18:51, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Dl2000 has fixed it, thanks a lot. TastyCakes (talk) 14:47, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

When I first looked at it, I had thought imagemaps we're using some funky markup, but it turns out it was quite a simple change. Perhaps I should have done more than taking a cursory glance at it. Mindmatrix 15:00, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

No problem, you can't be expected to do everything. Great template, by the way. TastyCakes (talk) 15:12, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Adding coordinates field to Infobox to add coordinates to Canadian Electoral District articles

Articles about electoral constituencies in Canada get tagged with {{Coord missing}} templates. A discussion was held recently at the Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board about how to add coordinates; one commenter included a link to a prior discussion at the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates. One suggested method of adding coordinates to such articles resulted: using the {{Coord}} template with appropriate "dim" parameter value, using the coordinates of a constituency office, and adding a comment in the article code indicating the coordinates were from such a constituency office. Including a coordinates field in the Infobox and using the Coord template with parameters "display=inline,title" would be a neater solution: I would like to propose that such a field be added. A subsidiary additional field might be "coordinates_comment" where one could indicate the location the coordinates identified, e.g. "Location of constituency office in Town A." The comment could be coded to place it in the Infobox in smaller font size immediately beneath the coordinates displayed. The comment would make it clearer for readers as to what coordinates they were being shown. Some districts have more than one constituency office; I've simply selected one of them in the cases I've come across. There is no special magic to using constituency offices — one could select a central point within the district as an alternative with an appropriate comment "Central point in the electoral district" — but it is at least an identifiable place that editors could find if they wanted to add coordinates to an article. One should acknowledge that there is small added update burden to adding coordinates, whatever the location for coordinates chosen, as district boundaries and constituency office locations can change. --papageno (talk) 16:17, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

 Done Added Coordinates and Coordinates_caption fields to the template and updated the documentation.--papageno (talk) 00:17, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I ahve also added a Coordinates_date field. This is to indicate when the coordinates location was added, or a known date for the accuracy of the coordinates. The parameter value is passed to an {{As of}} template. This should allow a better decision to be made whether or not to update the coordinates location, especially after an election resulting in a change of representative for the electoral district. The coordinates do not necessarily have to be changed — a former office is going to be in the district and so representative of the location of the district — but at least a more informed choice can be made. Other events that might precipitate a change in coordinates could be a change in constituency office location, or a change in the boundaries of the electoral district. --papageno (talk) 20:39, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Sandbox edits

I've made some changes to tidy this template's code en route to bringing it in line with the {{infobox}} defaults. Test cases can be seen here. An anon reverted saying that the new version was broken in Internet Explorer and Google Chrome, but I can't verify that. Can anyone else have a look? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 17:26, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Chris, give me five test cases (electoral riding pages), and I'll try them in the latest release versions of IE, Firefox and Chrome on Windows 7. Just tried Brant (electoral district) in Chrome and it looked fine. --papageno (talk) 20:40, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

They're available on Template:Infobox Canada electoral district/testcases, which I linked to above. I've tested in IE8 on Windows XP now and the output is fine. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 08:53, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I've now redeployed these changes, as nobody else seems to have been able to reproduce Noname2's problems. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 10:40, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

This is what it looks like in Chrome 12 on Windows 7 for me: http://oi54.tinypic.com/29mx8ae.jpg --Noname2 (talk) 17:52, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, Chris. Was a little slow-witted! --papageno (talk) 19:27, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Noname2: so far as I can see, that's exactly how it's supposed to look. What exactly is it that "doesn't display right"? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 12:46, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

The coloured bar next to the MP's name is supposed to be wider like it was before. Also the font is smaller now. If that was intentional then you should change it back. --Noname2 (talk) 16:25, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Both of those changes were intentional and were one of the main reasons for the changes. This brings the template closer to the styling used in {{infobox}}, a process which I will continue in future. If that's all then I think we're done here. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 09:46, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

We're not done here. I find that the old template was more aesthetically appealing, and you didn't consult anyone before making these changes. Also, there's another issue I found. On some pages, the words in the left column take up two lines and cause the template the stretch out: http://i56.tinypic.com/28rflmr.png Since you didn't consult anyone, I'm starting a section on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Electoral districts in Canada to see what they think. --Noname2 (talk) 17:32, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Help in correct implementation of coordinates parameters

Would any recent editor here be willing to help implement the coordinates parameters (coordinates, coordinates_caption and coordinates_date) correctly? I tried many tweaks and couldn't get them to work correctly. I guess the correct implementation was beyond my skill with template coding. The parameters are commented out for now. --papageno (talk) 19:35, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Easy fix:I've added it to the sandbox. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 11:16, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks. I've made a few adjustments (missing "}", format change) to the sandbox template, and added in the parameters to the Nickel Belt test case; the parameter values are made up. It seems to work. Tried with various parameters included or not included, and itseems to degrade gracefully. I think it is a "go" to include the code as is for the Coordinates parameters. --papageno (talk) 17:00, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

More Sandbox edits

I'm currently going through the code's sillier idiosyncracies (such as totally OTT error checking which makes parts of it completely unreadable); I'll deploy the result when I'm done. The only change to the visible output is the way that party colours are represented, which is unavoidable at this point (the colour is currently implemented by reserving an entire table column for the sake of one or two cells, a gross hack which will require changing a great deal of supporting templates to fully remove). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 11:16, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Code cleanup finished for now. Results are in the sandbox and a side-by-side comparison can be seen on the test cases page. The representation of party colours is a temporary hack until the system used for such things is overhauled. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 11:42, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Tried my hand at making the image map caption follow on from the image map without using a table cell and with the caption text italicized in the sandbox template. Works for all the cases except for Edmonton—Strathcona, which has a template as the image map parameter value. I acknowledge that you may have had the caption in a table cell to accommodate the Edmonton—Strathcona case. You are welcome to revert my change to the sandbox template or adjust further. --papageno (talk) 17:00, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually, that change was to match the way that {{infobox}} does it. Italics shouldn't be necessary in any case, but I've now pushed a fix which eliminates the divider between image and caption. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 09:58, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for removing the line. However the inclusion of a caption is achieved (and I am not an expert on template coding), there is never a line dividing a caption from its associated image in any infobox I have seen, including the test case at the right on the main {{Infobox}} page. --papageno (talk) 15:50, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Synced with sandbox

I've now deployed the updated code. If there are any problems, please let me know. Thanks. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 10:24, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

On Firefox 4.0.1 using Mac OS X 10.6.7, for Bathurst (electoral district) I'm getting the Census Divisions field in a second column to the right. - Wmcduff (talk) 14:53, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: See [2] for a cap of what I meant. - Wmcduff (talk) 14:55, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Addendum to the addendum: My theory it's something to do with the empty Area field? (Elections NB doesn't release the area of the polling districts, though I've put in a request.) - Wmcduff (talk) 14:49, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Missing a new row declaration. Now fixed. Sorry about that! If you spot anything else please let me know. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 10:36, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

By-elections

When the last election was a by-election, the infobox points you to a non-existent election. For instance, Vancouver-Point Grey points to the about to be deleted redirect British Columbia general election, 2011. For federal elections, a by-election year seems to make the infobox display unlinked text (See Calgary Centre). Is there a way to make the provincial districts behave like the federal ones? -Rrius (talk) 03:18, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Never mind, the problem only exists because of the errant redirect. -Rrius (talk) 14:45, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Allowing other colour template

I'd like to allow this to use Template:Canadian party colour as an option for provincial party colours. What do you think would be the best way to do that? Should I just add |prov-color= and allow people to enter the full template there, with colour defaulting to the system in place now when that parameter doesn't exist or does anyone have an idea about how to make that work with the parameters that are already there? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 20:17, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguating Michael Harris

I'm looking at Kitchener—Conestoga (provincial electoral district), where Michael Harris is the MPP - not the former premier nor any other person by that name. When I found it, there was an effort to disambiguate the name in the infobox by means of a prov-rep-link parameter, but it's not working. I tried a couple of ways of disambiguating, but haven't found a solution. Can somebody please advise? Thanks, PKT(alk) 13:46, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

It looks like the field prov-rep-link (and other link fields) was removed from the template by Arctic.gnome in 2013. A whole bunch of transclusions will likely need to be updated to reflect this, if they haven't been already. Just link to the article directly using normal wikilinks. I've fixed this one. Mindmatrix 14:11, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

flag icon built-in?

I noticed on Cariboo District the obtrusiveness of the BC flag, and the way the caption is staggered with "electoral district" on a different half-line than comes before. Per the Flag Icon usage standards, when has including the provincial flag on this infobox become de rigeur and why? Seems cumbersome and the flag, if anything, should be the federal one...if present at all. I was going to remove the flag but it seems built into the coding of the infobox's "Province" field as automatic. Note Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Icons#Avoid_flag_icons_in_infoboxes which says 'flags in infoboxes should be avoided.Skookum1 (talk) 07:55, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure you've seen Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Proposal regarding flag icons in infoboxes by now. At any rate, MOS:INFOBOXFLAG states "Human geographic articles – for example settlements and administrative subdivisions – may have flags of the country and first-level administrative subdivision in infoboxes; however, physical geographic articles – for example, islands, mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, and swamps – should not." So, they're not currently prohibited by current policy, but irrespective of this, I would support their removal. (I think I originally added the code for the flags because I modelled this template on another template that used flags.) Mindmatrix 14:39, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Incorrect map link: Brampton—Springdale

Hello - I tried clicking on the map link in the infobox for Brampton—Springdale this morning, but was sent to the map for Beaches—East York - that is, the URL http://www.elections.ca/res/cir/maps2/mapprov.asp?map=35007 . The Brampton—Springdale riding is defunct, and its Federal District number (35007) is the same as Beaches—East York. There is a map of Brampton—Springdale that's being kept for historical purposes by Elections Canada, which is available at http://www.elections.ca/res/cir/maps/mapprov.asp?map=35007&lang=e . I don't see how the map link in the infobox could be adjusted to point to the correct link. Would somebody please have a look at this? Thanks!...PKT(alk) 13:40, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Just found another example: the infobox link to the map for Kitchener—Waterloo (electoral district) (a defunct federal riding) yields the map for Hastings-Lennox and Addington at URL http://www.elections.ca/res/cir/maps2/mapprov.asp?map=35039. The two ridings apparently share the same Federal District number 35039. The historical map for Kitchener-Waterloo can be found at http://www.elections.ca/res/cir/maps/mapprov.asp?map=35039&lang=e . PKT(alk) 14:35, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Clarification whether it's a federal or provincial riding

I'm afraid I find this infobox confusing because it does not say right at the top if the riding is a federal or a provincial riding. Since it starts with the flag and province, I thought at first it was always referring to provincial ridings, but then I realized it could also be referring to a federal riding in that province. Could the first entry in the box be changed to give a choice between "Federal electoral district" or "Provincial electoral district", and if federal, put the maple leaf flag in? (if it's a federal riding, still important to say what province it is in, but the key thing is to make it clear that it's referring to a federal riding.) Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 17:11, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Actually, technically the box does already contain a way to clarify whether it's a federal or provincial riding — but it only seems to display correctly on active electoral districts, while disappearing if the district is coded as defunct. That should definitely be fixed, but that's more the problem than the flag-province field per se. I've posted to WP:VPT to see if we can get a template coding expert to look into this. Bearcat (talk) 17:53, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Changes

I'd be interested in seeing the following changes.

1. Remove the flag. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Icons#Avoid flag icons in infoboxes says "Generally, flag icons should not be used in infoboxes, even when there is a "country", "nationality" or equivalent field: they are unnecessarily distracting and give undue prominence to one field among many." It does go on to say "Human geographic articles – for example settlements and administrative subdivisions – may have flags of the country and first-level administrative subdivision in infoboxes." but in the original may is in italics and is not required. It does not add to the readers information in any way.

2. Get rid on the line wrap caused by the "Legislature" line. See Edmonton Strathcona and Tununiq for examples.

3. If the riding is held by an independent member then there is a link to Independent politician#Canada and to the left of the name is a grey bar. See Nunavut (electoral district). However, if the riding is in Nunavut or the Northwest Territories there are no political parties and form consensus governments. The box appears to have no coloured bar (it may be white), which makes the incumbents name look as if it is pushed to the right, and there is no link to Consensus government in Canada. See Tununiq again. There are multiple shades of grey available to be used that there would be a difference between consensus and independent.

I would have done some of this but the template is above my skill level. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 17:36, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I was going to say the flags might help quickly identify whether the district is federal or provincial, but that doesn't appear to be the case. -- Earl Andrew - talk 21:47, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

It's quite the opposite. The way the flags are used, coupled with the phrase "[province] electoral district]" as the header for the infobox, federal electoral districts look like they are provincial electoral districts. For instance, here's the links to two ridings that cover the same area of Regina: Regina—Lewvan and Regina Pasqua. Just look at the info boxes, can you tell right away which is a federal district and which is a provincial district? I've always thought the purpose of infoboxes is to help give accurate "at a glance" info to the reader. This template fails that test. The reader can be positively misled by the infobox, in my opinion. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:45, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

I would say keep the flag, but use provincial / territorial flags for provincial / territorial ridings, and the maple leaf for federal ridings. That would be a quick visual clue to help the reader, since the names of federal and provincial ridings can be quite similar. We can't assume that the average reader will know that an em-dash indicates a federal riding. ;) Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 19:02, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Two suggestions for changes to the template

I'm working on creating separate articles for each of the electoral districts of the Province of Canada, and I think we need to make two changes to the template to accommodate the particular features of those districts.

First, although the template accommodates Province of Canada districts, it doesn't make any distinction between districts for Canada East and Canada West. This is a significant omission, in my opinion. The Union Act distinguished between Canada East and Canada West in the allocation of seats, providing that each region was required to have the same number of seats. This constitutional requirement became a contributing factor in the Great Coalition which led to Confederation, as George Brown insisted on "rep by pop" between Canada East (Quebec) and Canada West (Ontario) in the new federation. Because of the political significance, I think there should be a variable in the template to indicate whether the district is Canada East or Canada West.

Second, when the province field is filled in with "Province of Canada", the inbox generates "Legislature: Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada". However, from the mid-1850s to 1867, the Legislative Council was elected, in separate electoral districts than for the Legislative Assembly. There should be some way to distinguish between districts for the Assembly and districts for the Council.

Thoughts? Comments? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:19, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Proposed change to template for Legislative Council divisions

Since I posted this inquiry, I got in touch with one of the template gurus, Dreamy Jazz 🎷 ^{talk to me | my contributions}, who very kindly took a crack at the issue of an option for electoral divisions for the Legislative Council. The draft Dreamy Jazz produced in the template sandbox has a new parameter, for "division". If you leave that field blank, you get the "electoral district for the Legislative Assembly" infobox. But if you answer that parameter with "yes", you get this result:

test

Province of Canada electoral division
Defunct pre-Confederation electoral division
Legislature	Legislative Council of the Province of Canada
Division created	date
Division abolished	date
First contested	date
Last contested	date

The reason for using "division" as the new parameter is that was the term used at the time to distinguish between the Legislative Assembly ridings and the Legislative Council divisions. We still see it today in the reference to the Quebec Senate seats, which are allocated according to the pre-Confederation "electoral divisions" for the old Legislative Council: Constitution Act, 1867, s. 22.
Are people okay with making this change to the template? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 16:25, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Two weeks have gone by without any comment, so I've asked Dreamy Jazz to make the change to the Template. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:49, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Done! Thanks, Dreamy Jazz! Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 19:43, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

CD, CSD →‎ Region, communities

Bold edit: I'm trying to wind up the excessive use of "census language" around Canadian community articles. Statistics Canada provides some great data products, but I think the general public will always be confused by the phrases "census division" and "census subdivision", which have no colloquial usage at best. At worst, census divisions are actively irrelevant (there are multiple provinces and territories where they don't line up with administrative boundaries).

So, I'm renaming "Census divisions" to "Region" and "Census subdivisions" to "Communities". These should make more sense to laypeople, and allow a wider range of possibilities (for instance Mushkegowuk—James Bay's position in Northern Ontario is probably more relevant than it straddling the Kenora and Cochrane Districts). Old infoboxes won't break, but in the future, "region" and "communities" will be valid parameters that work for the same purpose. Awmcphee (talk) 17:01, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps I'm in too much of a "Statistics Canada bubble", but I still think there's use for having Census Divisions and Census Subdivisions in the infobox, though I don't mind adding region as a parameter. However, I think "communities" is too subjective. What counts as a community? Do neighbourhoods count? Dissolved municipalities? Ghost towns? While people may not know what CSDs are, they are at least familiar with its synonyms (e.g. municipalities), and they have strict borders that can be referenced. As for your Ontario example, people in Northern Ontario are familiar with their districts for the most part. They may not have governments, but they do appear on maps, and they do serve some administrative purposes.-- Earl Andrew - talk 18:45, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Sure, I'll acknowledge the biggest advantage of census geography - Canada is a country where every province has invented its own system of local government. So, if a national standard is needed (which it is), census shapefiles are the logical starting point. My regional perspective just happens to be uniquely intolerant, because prairie CDs are the ones with the least significance on the ground. (They aren't even used for statistical purposes by the provinces they cover.)

On that note, "community" being used as a catch-all neutral descriptor is very characteristic of the North. In my experience, it's growing in usage, as modern treaties introduce more local complexity to the region. So, I would definitely argue that "Region, Communities" is good style for territorial ridings - even territorial ridings in the capital cities - and I would say that it's probably also good style for most rural ridings in the South. (Other words like "town" usually imply a particular type of local government, exclude reserve communities, etc etc.)

For the rest, you're right that it's not a great fit for urban ridings, where there are better words than "community" to describe locations that are all inside the same city. What I'll probably go do right now is implement a customizable "community_name" parameter that lets the user input 'neighbourhood', 'MRC', 'borough' (...) as needed? Awmcphee (talk) 19:54, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

I like the idea of making it province-specific, given that each province is unique it how it handles its subdivisions. And, while I like the idea of having a parameter for neighbourhoods in urban ridings, in most municipalities, their boundaries are not well defined, which makes things difficult. -- Earl Andrew - talk 21:02, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 15 July 2021

Hi, the links don't work JordanKlooster (talk) 04:10, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ◢  Ganbaruby!  (talk) 06:59, 15 July 2021 (UTC)