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Constituency infobox templates

I've been wanting to merge together {{UK constituency infobox}} and {{UK constituency infobox alt}} (and also {{Infobox UK constituency (former)}}) for a while, and I've just got around to doing some work on it. I've got a page at User:H2g2bob/Infobox UK constituency main and have some examples of what it looks like.

What are the opinions on this? Would using this template on current uk parliament constituencies be supported? --h2g2bob (talk) 21:10, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Style question re:List of MPs

In all the UK constituency articles, the table listing MPs looks like this:

While in the articles for Canadian Constituencies, it looks like this:

I thought I would ask, which looks better to people? I'm personally fond of the Canadian one, as it is easier to look at. That being said, I thought I would ask/suggest that we change the style to the Canadian one. I'm aware of the downside that many constituencies have been in existence since the Glorious Revolution, and therefore the lists/articles would be very long, as well as many other problems, but I thought I would put this topic on the table and gauge response.

Note:I am not suggesting that the current style is not good, I'm merely bringing up another idea. Bkissin (talk) 17:21, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

There are in fact several variants on the style of list in use in UK, particulrly for long-lasting constituencies, going back to the period when there were multiple members in some. We might adopt the Canadian model, but the number of the parliament should probably be omitted since these are rarely used in UK and there are no numbers for pre-1707 English Parliaments. The other problem with any change is that it will require a lot of long tedious work to make the alterations, unless someone (an admin) can devise a bot to do it automatically. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:52, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
In some cases of longlasting constituencies, I wonder whther the election results and MP list sections do not need to be forked off into separate articles. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:54, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
They certainly should, and we could start a debate about a sensible cut-off year: I would suggest 1950. A further issue is the varying order of sections among the constituencny articles, where in some the recent result are close to the bottom of the page. In the meantime, the Canadian example, repeating the name of a re-elected MP for each election year, would mean the table, and the whole page, becoming longer. Sussexonian (talk) 16:18, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps we could have the cut-off date be something like 1918 (suffrage for most adults), 1929 (universal suffrage for all those over 21), or something like 1802, with the first technical "election" in the UK (Which would be the most labour-intensive of all the ideas). Sussexonian, what is the significance, if any, of the 1950 cut-off date? With older constituencies, Peterkingiron brings up a good point in suggesting that we split it into an article/subpage, but I think that that should be on a case-by-case basis. All of these are still ideas. I'm not sure how to make a bot to make the alterations if that is what is decided. With the Canadian ridings, I usually did the tedious work by myself. Bkissin (talk) 01:44, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
If we need a mid-20th century cut-off, I would suggest 1945, when we had the Labour landslide after the war. For earlier dates, I am not convinced by 1707 and 1802, because the English constituencies did not change. The Great Reform Act of 1832, which changed the boundaries of many constituencies, abolishing (or amalgamating) some boroughs and splitting some counties might be appropriate, perhaps also 1885, when other constituencies were abolished in a reorganisation; others were reduced to one member. Peterkingiron (talk) 22:58, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
My suggestion of 1950 was that it was a year of major boundary revisions (some having been done in 1945), although either date would do. What I am suggesting is that where an article is named for a current (2010) constituency, the detail relating to MPs and election results prior to 1945/1950, for the similarly-named former seat, should be removed to another article. I think there are other changes needed to make the constituency articles less confusing, and some debate is wanted before any changes. Sussexonian (talk) 22:18, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Compact election box

As a belated followup to the discussions above on election boxes, I have gone ahead and created a templated version: see {{Compact election box}}

It's largely based on the tale created in the Blackburn article by Sam Blacketer, but adds a few extra parameters.

The documentation is not complete, but there should be enough of it to allow editors to experiment with it.

Here's an example of the output, with nonsense data:

Election Political result Candidate Party Votes % ±%
1953 by-election
death of Sir Bufton Tufton
Electorate: 57,901
Turnout: 31,432 (66.2%)		Conservative gain from SNP
Majority: 2,507 (12.5%)
Swing: 17.1% from SNP to Con 		Jimmy SmithConservative26,24150.5N/A
Dave Spart Labour10,71920.1N/A
1955 general election
Electorate: 57,901		Conservative hold Jimmy SmithConservativeunopposed
1959 general election
Electorate: 57,901
Turnout: 31,432 (66.2%)		Conservative hold
Majority: 12,952 (19.5%) 		Jimmy SmithConservative27,70954.5N/A
Dave Spart Labour8,60416.2N/A
Eric The Viking Vikings for Borsetshire6,90312.5N/A

I reckon it may need some tweaking, but that it's basically much more readable than the over-bulky {{election box}}.Any thoughts? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)


Thanks BHG. During the run up to the general election, it became obvious that constituency articles became very busy, especially with the addition and removal of candidates as polling day came closer. Would having "candidate 1", "candidate 2" etc be awkward to work with if the sequence was broken by a candidate who falls inbetween two already chosen? Would someone have to renumber candidate 2 as 3, 3 as 4 etc? And I really prefer vote change stats, I know it makes boxes bulky but vote change info is one of the things people look for. It /does/ look far better than the original....doktorb wordsdeeds 05:41, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the prompt feedback.
Your're right about the need for vote change, so I added that, and while I was at it I tweaked the whitespace a bit and added vcard classes (what you see above reflects those changes). More presentational tweaking may be required.
As to the issues in the run-up to an election, you're right that numbered params make that job a little more difficult. I can see a few possible answers to that problem:
  1. just use {{election box}} until the results are in, and at some point afterwards convert to the compact format. That has the advantage of visually separating data on an election which hasn't happened yet, but does require a little extra work when results arrive.
  2. Stop using any election box fmt until results are in.
  3. Accept that some re-numbering will bee required when votes are in.
None of those are ideal, but ... it seems to me that the overwhelming bulk of the election result data being added to constituency articles is historical data, rather than current elections. In those cases, the order of the results is known at the outset, so the problem doesn't arise. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:00, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'm talking to myself here ... but just thought I'd mention that having tweaked the template further (to produce the output seen above), I reckoned it was good enough for use. So I have used it for full sets of results in two constituencies so far: Bradford West and Leith Burghs.

Some further tweaking may be required, but it's more-or-less done. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:08, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

A bit late to the discussion, but I wanted to show some support for your work on this - the new boxes are clear, compact, and look good. Although I don't have a problem with the old boxes, they don't seem popular, and this address pretty much all the issues which have been raised with both the old format and Sam Blacketer's first draft. Do you think it would be worth seeing if a bot could convert all the articles? They'd probably need checking by hand. Warofdreams talk 21:17, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, Warofdreams, and sorry for my slow reply to your support!
I think it would be a good idea to see if a bot could do some of the work, tho in practice it's be a rather complicated job for a bot. I'll take another look in the autumn and see whether I can cobble together some sort of script which would semi-automate the task; that'd make it much faster than doing everything by hand, without requiring a massively sophisticated programming job. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:32, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
  • I have been concerned for some time how much space election boxes occupy. They are also duplicating the lists of members (which is unsatisfactory). With so many minor parties standing in recent years, I am not sure of the merits of listing all the candidates who lost their deposits. I go along with those who have suggested that this new compact box should not be used for pending elections. In my view, byelection articles should not be linked. If there is anything worth saying, it would be better to include it in a Byelections section of the consituency article. If BHG can devise a bot to make the conversions so much the better. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Minor changes to constituency name/boundary

Would any users be able to share advice on the situation where a constituency has minor changes to its name/boundary that would automatically warrant a new article, as a result of the first review of the Scottish Parliament constituencies some have had only minor changes such as Dundee City East and Edinburgh Northern and Leith others have had only a change in name such as Na h-Eileanan Siar, is there a standard practice of creating a new article when there is a change in name albiet minor ones? thanks--Barryob (Contribs) (Talk) 14:02, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that those are possibly somewhat marginal situations, but I still think that in practice it is much better to create a new article, because otherwise the name of the new constituency starts creeping in articles referring to the older name. (e.g. Someone described as having been a candidate for Dundee City East in the 1999 elections. That sort of anachronism is easily introduced through good faith error unless we stick to the one-name-per-article rule. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:55, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
I generally agree, but I think that Na h-Eileanan Siar is a different case, because it clearly is exactly the same constituency, just under a different name. If an organisation changes its name without changing in any other way, we wouldn't automatically split the article, so I don't think there's any need in this very specific case. Warofdreams talk 21:05, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
I agree with that, and should have said so explicitly, so well done noting that. I think that with Na h-Eileanan Siar we should apply the same principle which we applied to the Westminster constituency, and also to Ynys Môn/Anglesey: that there was no change of name, just a change of which language was used, so we could just rename the article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:22, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

List of United Kingdom Parliament constituencies (1832–1868)

I have just finished creating a new List of United Kingdom Parliament constituencies (1832–1868), and have moved it mainspace.

The list is drawn from Craig's 1832-1885 election results, cross-checked against the gazetted returns for the 1832 general election. I'm not particularly happy with using that source for this purpose, but since I don't have a copy of Craig's book on boundaries and haven't been to the library to get copies of the 1832 reform acts, it's the best source I have.

Can anyone with better sources please take a peep and see what you think?

I'd also welcome thoughts on my decision to label the Districts of Burghs/Boroughs in the "type" column as "district" rather than burgh/borough. I have included a note on constituency types (which may benefit from improvement) where I explain the status of districts as a variant of the borough ... but do others agree that the distinction is worth retaining?

Any other comments welcome. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:18, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks good. I am not sure of the merits of distinguishing the districts of boroughs from intact boroughs, but you might put boroughs for these. Burghs would be an appropriate term for those in Scotland. The disenfranchised notes look odd. It might be better to have a complete column headed "notes". However keep up the good work. The present capnote looks odd. it might be better to have these as a section "MP lists" and also link the MP categories (which unlike the lists probably all exist). Peterkingiron (talk) 15:26, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Craig's book on parliamentary boundaries does not cover the pre-1885 period. Craig also used forms of county constituency names like Surrey Eastern or Surrey East (from 1950 when the official naming convention changed). However strictly the more correct usage for a county division is Eastern Surrey or East Surrey. For simplicity this project has used forms like East Surrey throughout. Borough constituencies are simpler, as the division name or compass direction has always followed the borough name, ie Bradford South or Birmingham Edgbaston (often with a comma between the two elements, which the project chooses to always omit).

I did look at the nineteenth century legislation, when I produced a list of constituency names, to get them as official as possible. See Official names of United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies. However there are problems in producing a definitive short form name, because the legislation in 1832 only refers to new seats or changed constituency boundaries not to all the post 1832 constituencies. It was only in 1885 that Parliament started setting out every seat (by name) in one piece of legislation. The Scottish District of Burghs and Welsh District of Boroughs constituencies are one of the problem areas. It is a total minefield, so I commend you for making the effort. --Gary J (talk) 14:21, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Birirmingham Aston and Aston Manor

At Talk:Birmingham Aston (UK Parliament constituency)#Proposed splitting out of Aston Manor I have proposed slitting out the material on the 1885-1918 Aston Manor constituency to a separate article. Comments from projects members would be welcome at Talk:Birmingham Aston (UK Parliament constituency)#Proposed splitting out of Aston Manor. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:27, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Article(s) listed for deletion

Uncle G (talk) 18:02, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Notification of discussion

I thought that this project might want to be notified that there is a discussion regarding the format/details of constituency articles at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom#A few little things. Thanks, Zangar (talk) 11:36, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Stamford (UK Parliament constituency)

Dates of the Stamford constituency are given as 1295–1307 & 1467–1885, and yet a member is returned for 1322. I'm going to merge the date ranges as it seems that the constituency simply didn't bother to return members, but continued to exist in these years. Please revert and advise if wrong. Rich Farmbrough, 21:48, 20 November 2010 (UTC).

The mediaeval period was complex and the same borough might well be invited to send Members to one Parliament, then not to the next one, and then back in the one after that. It wasn't a case of not bothering to return Members, but of the monarch choosing not to invite them to send Members. The History of Parliament series is the best source and shows Stamford was only incorporated as a borough in 1462 - which ties in well with the 1467 date. No entry appears for Stamford in the 1386-1421 volume. I then had a look at the Return of Members of Parliament (which is recognised as incomplete - further returns having been found since it was compiled - but is valuable nonetheless). This shows, for the Parliaments for which Returns were found, Stamford returning Members to Parliament in 1295, 1298, 1302, 1305, 1306, and May 1322, but not thereafter until 1467. Stamford doesn't seem to have been invited to return Members to Parliament in 1300, 1301, January 1307, October 1307, 1309, 1311, July 1313, September 1313, 1314, 1315, 1318, 1319, 1320, and 1321. Sam Blacketer (talk) 22:26, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
This seems to be a common situation. Both Kidderminster and Dudley sent members in the early years of Parliament and then not again until much later. If the town sent members, it had to pay their expenses and presumably they thought it not worth the money. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:23, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

The Wrekin

Just to note that I have boldly merged The Wrekin (UK Parliament constituency) with information from The Wrekin (historic UK Parliament constituency). I don't see any particular reason to divide the two, seeing as the main towns in the constituency now were in the constituency when it was created in 1918. I note there isn't any divide in Newcastle-upon-Tyne North (UK Parliament constituency), despite the fact that the seat of that name from 1983 onwards consisted of precisely no voters who were in the constituency of that name before 1983. Sam Blacketer (talk) 22:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Well done. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:19, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Renamed constituencies

Going through the UK constituency articles, there doesn't seem to be a clear policy on what happens when a constituency is renamed with exactly the same boundaries. The examples I can think of are:

In the former two cases the same article is used for the two names; in the latter there are two separate articles. I've no axe to grind here but I would like to implement a standard. Thoughts anyone? Crooked cottage (talk) 02:23, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

There are other examples of Boundary Commission reports which do not change the boundaries of a constituency but give it a new name - the others from 1997 (not 1992) are Brecon and Radnor becoming Brecon and Radnorshire, Montgomery becoming Montgomeryshire, and Scarborough becoming Scarborough and Whitby. There are also rare cases, such as Newcastle-upon-Tyne North in 1983 mentioned above, where the Boundary Commission creates a new constituency bearing the same name as an old one but it does not have anything in common.
I would say as a general rule that it should be separate articles for each separate name, but that if the change is not material (as for instance York/City of York), then the change can simply be dealt with in the text. I would also make an exception for constituency names that are changed only because they are rendered in a different language, which would cover Ynys Môn and also Na h-Eileanan an Iar/Western Isles - there the name is actually the same. Sam Blacketer (talk) 14:15, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
OK, thanks. The standard you suggest is already in place so no work required as far as I can tell. Crooked cottage (talk) 15:01, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
The present system is one-name one article. Changes in scope are best handled through the "boundaries section". Ideally, when a constituency is created or abolished, there should be a cross-reference to the predecessor or successor. If it is a straight rename, the statement that it was abolished should be replaced by one that it was renamed. I suspect that Kingswinford (UK Parliament constituency) was renamed Brierley Hill (UK Parliament constituency) in the 1930s following a local government reorganisation abolishing Kingswinford RDC and creating Brierley Hill UDC, but the articles do not say so, because I do not have the evidence. The situation that an old and a re-created constituency cover quite different areas is not uncommon. For example South Staffordshire (UK Parliament constituency). One answer might be to split such articles, but I am inclined to leave well alone. Peterkingiron (talk) 22:45, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Rayment

I've been adding or correcting links to Rayment. It seems we have two different standards for linking to the Rayment pages: this one from East Lothian (UK Parliament constituency) has the reference against the member:

Year Member[1] Party
1983 John Home Robertson Labour
2001 Anne Picking Labour
2010 Fiona O'Donnell Labour
  1. ^ Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "E" (part 1)

whereas this one from its predecessor Berwick and East Lothian (UK Parliament constituency) has the template link typed into the references:

Election Member Party
1950 John James Robertson Labour
1951 William Anstruther-Gray Unionist
1966 John Mackintosh Labour
Feb 1974 Michael Ancram Conservative
Oct 1974 John Mackintosh Labour
1978 by-election John Home Robertson Labour
1983 constituency abolished

The Rayment link appears below as

Which standard should apply? I can see arguments both ways. Crooked cottage (talk) 16:32, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

There are a number of discrepancies in the layout of member lists. If you are editing them, I would suggest that you try to increase their conformity. I would suggest that "election" is a better heading than "year". Ideally, if this is a general election it should be linked to an election article, but bye-election dates should be unlinked, as we will probably never normally have articles on individual bye-elections; no doubt there will be some that are notable or notorious enough to need them, but probably very few, and they can be linked when the article is created. I prefer the in-line reference style of your first example, because rayment is not authority for party affiliation. Peterkingiron (talk) 22:53, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for this. I'm already working to 'Election' rather than 'Year' (or 'Elected' which I have also seen). I tend to agree with you about the Rayment links but will allow others to comment for a week: my real concern is to have a link which goes to the right place so I'll work to the old standard for now and backfit later if that is the prevailing opinion.
Actually, we do have a lot of by-election articles in the era I'm working on (realistically post 1885 or I'll never finish). There are some articles missing or stubbed, but I'll create these as I go along and notice them to be missing. In the meantime I agree it's better to have no link than a dead link, and I've amended Darlington - for now - to remove the dead link to an 1898 by-election. You'll notice that there are three live by-elections here, as I was pleased to find.
But I've digressed somewhat here. Any more thoughts on Rayment? Crooked cottage (talk) 02:27, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I strongly oppose unlinking by-elections. Apart from the fact that a lot of work has gone into linking them so far, I have written dozens of articles on them, and it is very rare to find any after 1885 which are non-notable (part, perhaps from some uncontested ministerial by-elections). Some turn out to be very meaty indeed: my most recenjt was the Blackburn by-election, 1869, which I chose more or less at random, and developed quite a bit ... but it could be expanded lot more. There may not be many of us writing those articles (I'm only aware of two editors doing many of them), but leaving them as redlinks encourages others to start, and complies with WP:REDLINK. I have restored the Darlington link.
I agree with the "Election" header rather than "year" or "elected", and in view of the general preference for inline citations I have been adding refs to tables of MPs to show the sources. IMO we should be adding many more such inline refs, not removing them ... and they get particularly important for the periods pre-1832, when many of the sources get flaky and contradictory. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:48, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
There might be a case for using the "year" heading in some articles rather than "election": When an MP defects to a different party - there, no election has taken place, but a different party needs to be listed, really with an appropriate year/date, one example being Shrewsbury and Atcham (UK Parliament constituency). Therefore the heading "election might be a bit misleading (especially if the defection happened in an election year). Zangar (talk) 15:07, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I take your point here. "Year" doesn't really work with by-elections though. I'd really like a generic term if we can find one, and to add the term defection to cases such as the one you mention. We could end up with something like:
Event Member[1] Party
1950 election Windy Miller Labour
1978 by-election Mrs. Honeyman Labour
1980 defection Mrs. Honeyman Conservative
1983 election constituency abolished
Crooked cottage (talk) 16:08, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I don't like the word "defection" in this context; it carries a meaning of betrayal and treachery which don't reflect the much looser party affiliations which characterised the 19th century. So far I have done non-election years by italicising and footnoting them, and I know I;m not the only one to have done that:
Event Member[2] Party
1950 election Windy Miller Labour
1978 by-election Mrs. Honeyman [3] Labour
1980 Conservative
1983 election constituency abolished
  1. ^ Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "E" (part 1)
  2. ^ Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "E" (part 1)
  3. ^ Mrs. Honeyman was elected in 1978 at as a Labour candidate, but joined the Conservatives in 1980
--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:26, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I think "Event" is a good column heading for all the eventualities, and BHG's way of listing defections seems to be the best, I know I've tried to keep to this in the past. Zangar (talk) 17:49, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm happy thus far. Will leave this open until 11/01 for further comment as I only want to do this modification once. Crooked cottage (talk) 18:53, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
CC- to return to your specific point, the East Lothian example is an ITC (In text citation) whereas the Berwick one is not. Generally the view is, I believe, that ITCs are preferable, and sometimes bossy splats appear on articles telling people to use them. However there are times when an article is so dependent on a particular source that it is a bit articificial to use an ITC linking to a small section. Also the constituency articles often use the ref parameters to generate notes. So my preference would be to use the Berwick example for constituencies, and use an ITC in an MP's article. Don't know what others think. Anyway the effect is the same and the important thing is to have a reference that returns the Rayment constituency page and not, for example, mites or cricketers or anything else. Regards and KUTGW. Motmit (talk) 19:20, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Motmit, thanks for that. Just to be clear about my scope:
  • Those constituency articles including a period between 1885 and now I will standardise, including a link to the appropriate Rayment page
  • Those constituency articles which are only pre-1885 I will merely fix Rayment
  • The by-election articles which have an issue with Rayment I will fix. I will ensure the election data contained therein is also in the relevant main article. Other by-elections with an issue I will fix if I happen to find them
  • MP and peerage articles I'm not aiming to touch
Cheers. Crooked cottage (talk) 19:42, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Election or Event

ElectionEvent Member Party
1950 John James Robertson Labour

This discussion morphed a lot from its starting point, and while I thought I'd seen all the issues raised, I had missed one: CC's proposal to change the table of MPs by using "Event" rather than "Election" in the table heading, as in the box to the right.

I spotted this only when the changes popped up on my watchlist ... and I don't think it's a good idea.

Ninety-something percent of the entries in that column are either general elections or by-elections, and explicitly labelling the column as "Election" makes that clear. Without the heading, the bare year makes no sense: a year is not an event.

We could do a workaround, by explicitly labelling every election, as in the example to the right here ... but that creates a lot of repeated verbiage in every table, which makes it harder to to read. It would be a lot of work to do that to all 2,000 constituency articles.

Please can we just stick to using "Election" as the header? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:23, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, there isn't a right answer here. Consistency is the key. Crooked cottage (talk) 12:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Town/village articles with out-of-date constituency information

I'm new here but have some idea about how Wikipedia works. I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to raise this problem - perhaps some of the geographically-inclined Wikiprojects would be better, but they may lack the specialist knowledge evident at this project (the talk page archives here have been a gold mine of information!).

A very large number of British town and village articles list their UK Parliament constituency, but many don't seem to be up-to-date with the 2010 boundaries - for instance Birdingbury lists the constituency as Rugby and Kenilworth (UK Parliament constituency) but that's been abolished. Having looked at a large number of small town/village articles recently, this seems to be a large-scale problem. This is in addition to the forthcoming problem (not for a while?) of the next set of boundaries being issued - both are obviously relevant to place article, since one will give the current representative and the other relates to where residents will actually be able to vote. I don't know how that will be handled.

Is there any co-ordination between this project and the geographic ones that might deal with these issues? Minor boundary changes that switch small villages might be hard to systematically work through, but is there a way to at least automatically flag up the most egregious errors like listing towns as sitting in defunct constituencies? There are likely to be hundreds of errors in articles so a systematic method would be good. Perhaps using "what links here" on members of Category:United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies disestablished in 2010? Admittedly that wouldn't work if historical constituencies were listed for towns and villages, which would be a very laudable thing to do, but I think the vast majority don't at the moment, so that trick might work for now. CarefulCounting (talk) 23:24, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Very likely. I would suggest that the text be amended to say that the place was in Constituency A until 2010 then Constituency B. Articles on towns and villages are individually created and edited and of very mixed quality. Some are edited by locals, who will not doubt discover and correct the error. However, I suspect that this task of updating will take a lot of time from a lot of editors. Peterkingiron (talk) 22:59, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
I did a small amount of work on this yesterday, and the few examples I saw had references within Infobox UK place (this is certainly true for Birdingbury). As you say Peter, locals may find these in time, but if we can I'd like to point out to Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography that there is an issue and its scope. So my question: can we use the WP database to pick up any articles using Template {{Infobox UK place}} which has parameter constituency_westminster set to a value which is in the category CarefulCounting mentions? Crooked cottage (talk) 23:55, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. If that's possible (and I think technically it's a fairly simple problem for a bot-writer), that would be smashing stuff. That way the article text could be amended to list former constituency information, and any article with an obviously dodgy parameter would be flagged up. (I wonder if the former constituency could be stored more systematically, but it's not something that should really belong in the main infobox without jamming it up... I suppose in an absolutely ideal world, any town or village article would contain an administrative history that lists every constituency, county and LA it's ever been in, but that not to be expected before Wikipedia's 20th anniversary!) I suppose a similar "hunting" strategy could be employed as a follow-up, using a list of constituencies whose names have survived, but which had substantial boundary changes. CarefulCounting (talk) 23:59, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Compact election box usage

I've made a start converting current constituencies articles to use compact election box: I have a semi-automated way of doing this which keeps any in line images. The two I've started with are Donny North and Witney. Just a few thoughts here for the moment to get some feedback: I'm not intending to make a mass change to these for a while.

  • In Doncaster North, 1983, there's someone called M. Swan who stood for Anti-Sleaze Labour. This won't transform so I've put him as an Independent for the moment. Am I missing something here?
  • The way I've been working with 1997 and 1992 is that for 1992 I add one reference (great if there's one there, I add another) to the election result, and for 1997 I add either two, three or possibly four.
    • When no boundary changes, reference to the result, reference to page in R&T saying no boundary changes
    • When boundary changes, reference to the result, reference to the page in R&T giving notional result, reference saying swings based on notional result not actual
    • When boundary changes, party changes hands in notional 1992 result but changes back in 1997 (e.g. Kingswood and there are probably others) we have reference to the result, reference to the page in R&T giving notional result, reference saying swings based on notional result not actual, reference saying that the 1992 notional result means that this is described as a gain.
  • OK so where am I going here? All of these are references against the title. The same was true of Election box - we have not regressed. But in the second case the third reference is really on the swing, and in the third case, the third reference is really on the swing and the fourth on the result. Is this worth making changes to the template for? Crooked cottage (talk) 17:45, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
"M. Swan" (actually Neil Swan) was an independent, standing with a particular title. Until the passing of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, parties and descriptions weren't regulated - unless they had been deliberately chosen with the intent to deceive - so it's often hard to determine whether these titles were just adopted for the election (as his was), or whether they are one-man-and-his-dog organisations. I guess that "independent labour" would be a reasonable description, but we should try to include the actual descriptions where possible. Warofdreams talk 17:23, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
I think we may need to fix this pretty sharpish though - the same will happen to Bus-Pass Elvis on Friday morning. Crooked cottage (talk) 17:45, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
As I have proposed on Barnsley Central by-election's article talk page, I think the compact box could be worth trialing for the advantages and disadvantages during a pending election. There could be something we don't yet think as a good or bad point until it's used 'in real time'. OR, to be perhaps more balanced, maybe run parallel boxes - one on the article itself (the current box), and the 'compact' on the talk page, to see how it compares?
Thing is, I prefer the current box for its ease of use, especially for local elections with 4 candidates (tops in most cases). I worry that the compact one would not be best for all contexts. It's good to play, though...doktorb wordsdeeds 18:32, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
The only disadvantage I can see of {{compact election box}} is that a little more tweaking is required when the results come in, because the candidate order is determined by numbering rather than by sequence of entry. That doesn't seem to me to be a big deal, and I think it's more than offset by the advantages of the more compact display and the greater amount of info displayed.
As to Doncaster North's 1983 candidate, he should be entered as he described himself in the campaign. I have changed him to "Anti-sleaze labour" per the Guardian's entry. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:04, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for this change to the template to support Doncaster North. What this means is that we can convert old elections without worries of the template breaking. However, in the interest of impartiality for new elections going forward, I think we should create new template links for each of the candidates standing where they don't exist. Is this too much work? Crooked cottage (talk) 13:43, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
There wasn't actually any change needed to the template; it was just a matter of using a difft parameter: candidaten_party_unlinked instead of candidaten_party.
I'm not sure what you mean about new template links. Do you mean a party to link to for them? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:01, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I see what you mean about not having changed the template now. That works well for old elections. What I was wondering was whether it was practical for each candidate to have a party to link to, even if it is only a stub. If one party in an election has a party to link to they all should or we stand in danger of being accused of bias against minor parties, however daft that is. It's certainly practical for by-elections, but is it practical at general election times? Crooked cottage (talk) 20:39, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I strongly advise against a policy of insisting on linking every 'party'. Until the adoption of a system of party registration in 1997, it was quite common for candidates who were in fact Independents, supported by no organisation, to put themselves on the ballot paper as though they were a candidate of a party which they had just formed. These parties did not really exist beyond being a name on a ballot paper for a single election. This also happened before the party description went on the ballot paper and even Fred Craig was initially caught out by some of them - for example Richard Wort in Kinross and West Perthshire by-election, 1963 stood as 'Light and Dark Blue Conservative Party' and is awarded the abbreviation 'L&DBCP' in Craig's volume for 1950-73. Nothing was ever heard of him and his party. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
Yes, be careful trying to add 21st century reality to the very loose and flexible party name system of the past :) Prior to the creation of the Register of Political Parties, essentially any independent candidate could invent a label for the ballot paper. You don't have to go far through the list of UK by-elections to see examples of this. However easy it may look to programme the compact box to only recognise party names, it will do unknown damage to those many candidates from as recently as the late 90s who chose a bespoke ballot paper labeldoktorb wordsdeeds 20:53, 20 January 2011 (UTC
Sorry everyone, I wasn't clear what I meant. I am proposing doing precisely nothing as far as past elections are concerned. But what about future elections? When candidates come in for the Barnsley central by-election and their parties do not have a template (like Bus Pass Elvis), do we leave it that way or create a template? I know that means that there may be stub articles to create but are people still saying leave as is? Crooked cottage (talk) 19:59, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Aah,I understand now. Trouble is, as I know to my cost, trying to create articles for one-time or minority parties can cause other editors to strike down with great AfD-vengence. With political party registration making "independent" more common than the novelty candidates of yore, I think it's probably best to not to have a policy on minority candidates, rather treat each case in isolation. doktorb wordsdeeds 20:38, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Operation May

Devolved elections, possible Westminster by-election(s), AV referendum (possibly) - we're going to have to work ruddy hard in a bit :| Should we draw up some way to ensure all the necessities for the period is sorted? Candidates in constituencies is the obvious one, but for Scotland and Wales there are Regional Lists we need to write up as well (see the 2009 UK regional pages at the European Elections to see how I think this should be done).

A checklist would be very useful if it starts to look like we're falling behind....doktorb wordsdeeds 17:59, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I think Westminster by-elections, even if there are three or more on the go at once which is possible, will sort themselves out. The rest of what you mention may seem less glamourous to some. I think it's a good idea to detail what needs to be done, to give a template (even if it's just a specific article) for each type of work, and to state areas where volunteers are needed. If you have time, it might be better to do this sooner rather than later.
Cheers. Crooked cottage (talk) 18:17, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
Think you're right about the devolved assemblies not being seen as quite the attraction of Westminster :) There is at least one - I won't name it, go seek, have some fun :) - Welsh Assembly constituency article with NO results AT ALL =O. doktorb wordsdeeds 18:35, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
I think we are talking about somewhere I used to live many years ago, so it's particularly embarrassing (and I'll fix it this weekend). But I start looking and I see wrong info box, lack of references - and I'm not looking too hard. So what I think we need to do is create a list of nice-to-haves (if we don't have it) which people might do as low-priority tasks while doing the essential work. Are you OK with creating a starting point for the scope of the work? Thanks. Crooked cottage (talk) 21:13, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
Have just done a survey and six of the current National Assembly constituencies have no election results on them - so you needn't be so embarrassed. Sam Blacketer (talk) 21:27, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
I've added 2007 results for them all, but several are missing results for 1999 and 2003. Warofdreams talk 13:16, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Operation May checklist

  1. Ensure Scottish Parliamentary and Welsh Assembly constituency articles are up-to-date, with an aim for doing so by March
Update:Using web-resources to update candidates for SP.
  1. Ensure re-directs (Dundee City etc.) are correctly named by April
Update:Have not approached this to date.
  1. Ensure electoral region articles are updated (with incorporated constituencies and full party/candidate tables) during April
Update:Information is available but not approached this to date
  1. Keep United Kingdom local elections 2011 article clean, clear and updates were possible
Update:Seems to be ticking along very well without me at the moment...
  1. Create and maintain English council election articles where possible (backlog here is immense and probably not worth effort to improve tbf)
Update:Not a priority at the moment.
  1. Maintain and update AV Referendum article, with Commons and Lords progress to date
Update:Could do with updating the AV referendum article (13 days in the House of Lords and so signs of progression).
  1. Create AV results sub-article by March
Update:No need to do so yet
  1. Ensure London Mayoral and London Assembly articles are not left 'in isolation' whilst the elections remain 'off the radar'
Update:No need to do so yet

Updates 26 Jan doktorb wordsdeeds 05:44, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

There's more...

Right, looking at this a different way...

  • Welsh Assembly referendum
  • AV referendum
  • Scottish Parliament election - regions and constituencies
  • Welsh Assembly election - regions and constituencies
  • Norn Iron Assembly election - constituencies?
  • Norn Iron local authority elections
  • English loucal authority elections
  • Barnsley Central Westminster by-election
  • Belfast West Westminster by-election

We need, in short, a strategy to deal with these, and I am not sure that any of us has the time needed to focus on all of them to the necessary degree. The Scottish situation, alone, worries me - the fact that, in late January 2011, the constituency list was until yesterday incomplete is not Wiki at its best.

doktorb wordsdeeds 06:49, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Consituencies new in 2010

I notice a number - not all - of the constituencies created in 2010 have a link to Constituencies in the United Kingdom general election, 2010 or Constituencies in the next United Kingdom general election which both go to the same article. I can see that this link was relevant before the 2010 election but not now - it should be an either all or nothing across the current constituencies as far as I can tell, and I would prefer nothing. If there are no objections within a week, I'll remove as I touch the pages.

Thanks. Crooked cottage (talk) 18:26, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it'd be better not to have it. Most constituencies have existed for many elections, and and they'd get very cluttered if we added such a link for each election. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:07, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I have just finished a series of AWB runs through the constituencies to add a link Leigh Rayment's page on that constituency using {{rayment-hc}}.

So far as I can see, they all now have such a link. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:04, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Well done, that's a mammoth effort. Crooked cottage (talk) 21:12, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Categories for discussion nomination of Category:Parliamentary constituencies in Northern Ireland

Category:Parliamentary constituencies in Northern Ireland, which is under the purview of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:12, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm commenting here rather than to a wider audience as this renaming really needs to go further. I agree in principle with what you are doing here, but I think we need to be consistent between Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. As far as I can tell we have the following:
Are you proposing that all of these bar the second be renamed? Thanks. Crooked cottage (talk) 10:58, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
I had proposed at CFD renaming only the N. Irl one, to resolve the ambiguity of the current categ name and its inconsistency with its sub- category.
I do see that there is a wider problem of inconsistency and ambiguity, so I think that a wider discussion is due on how to resolve that. In the meantime, I have suggested at CFD that we should rename the N. Irl one as proposed to resolve the local ambiguity and inconsistency there, as a temporary fix pending a wider solution ... but if editors would prefer to address them all together, then I'll happily withdraw that nom and we can do them all in one go. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:16, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
Whatever is the easiest process for us to achieve the big picture. I don't see it being controversial what I'm proposing. Unless of course anyone thinks differently :)Crooked cottage (talk) 14:35, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
After the comments here and at CFD prompted me to do a little more thinking, I suggest we should:
  1. move to a consistent naming scheme for all of the Westminster constituency categories, regardless of which of the UK's constituent nations they are located in
  2. make sure that this naming scheme is not ambiguous with any of the other types of constituency in the UK, or with the generic concept of "parliamentary constituencies" in the UK.
So far, the only way I can see to achieve that is to use the word "Westminster". Is that acceptable?
(There are a few other issues to sort out, such as whether the word "historic" is the best choice for defunct constits, and whether it should go be prefixed (as in Category:Historic parliamentary constituencies in England) or suffixed (as in Category:Parliamentary constituencies in Essex (historic). My own preference is for the parenthesised suffix, because it is easier to sort and easier to use with HotCat. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:19, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
Fine by me. Crooked cottage (talk) 14:05, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

1992

There is someone or something moving very quickly on 92.11.164.17 adding 1992 election full name references. Politics Resources doesn't give these, only initials. It's not vandalism - some at least I know to be correct. But no reference. Any idea where these names are coming from? Crooked cottage (talk) 02:45, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Given that he's adding the names of minor party candidates, my guess is the Return of Election Expenses. Sam Blacketer (talk) 10:32, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
Many full names for 1992 candidates are on the Guardian website, but not generally the minor party candidates. Warofdreams talk 12:45, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Sam, I'll start adding that reference in as I go along. I won't add in full names with new results as it's a lot of work for not much benefit. But if this person returns and does so, at least it's verifiable.

Tick marks on election results, labelling by-elections

I spotted two edits in which Crossfire101 (talk · contribs) had added tick marks to the election results section of two constituency articles: [1], [2].

I reverted those two, because this a) does not conform with the convention so far, and b) adding extra markup complicates maintenance. If editors want to retain the {{election box}} series of templates, there is {{Election box winning candidate with party link}}, which bolds the line with the winner's data. I suggest that any further markup should be added through the templates, rather than by adding data other than the name to the name field.

Crossfire101 also removed the label "by-election" in the link to the 2007 by-election in the list of MPs for Sedgefield, which I have also reverted. I have added a lot of those labels myself, and i know that I am not the only editor do so, so I have restored the label.

I am sure these changes were done in good faith, and I am posting here because after revering those edits I noticed that Crossfire101 had amended more constituencies in the same way, and I thought that this needed a centralised discussion. I will notify Crossfire about this now. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:07, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I would certainly say the ticks/crosses are not needed. It seems highly out of character and out of place. Removing "by-election" seems to remove the necessary reference point/context from the list, so I would not agree with following this route either. doktorb wordsdeeds 20:15, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
It's ugly as hell. I noted this on some of the Oxfordshire constituencies a couple of weeks ago, although I've no idea whether the source is the same. I agree though, it's done in good faith.
I've been adding 'by-election' in where I see red links in an MP tablew which are obviously by-elections - it sometimes prompts editors to write an article :) Crooked cottage (talk) 22:27, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
Putting a tick by the name of the winner of an election is a standard form in reporting US election results. It's used because interim vote figures are available through the count, so the candidate with the most votes may just be in the lead at the latest count rather than the undisputed winner. That's not the case in the UK where the only figures that are produced are at the end of the count (albeit that in a few very rare cases there are subsequent recounts with scrutiny). Sam Blacketer (talk) 22:42, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
@Crooked cottage, I may be misreading your comment, but I'd suggest a little caution in assuming that a change of MP is necessarily a by-election. Successful election petitions were rare in the 20th century, but in the 18th and 19th centuary a lot of seats changed hands as a result of petitions, or sorting out double returns. I'd recommend checking the list of UK by-elections, and if a by-eln isn't listed there Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs will usually list a petition. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:50, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Agreed, I'm not doing this arbitrarily. Crooked cottage (talk) 11:53, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Canadian style MP boxes

Here we see a cut from Finchley (UK Parliament constituency). I've moved it in one level or it looks like three topics:

Members of Parliament

Election Member [1] Party Notes
1918 John Newman Conservative MP for Enfield 1910–1918
1923 Thomas Atholl Robertson Liberal
1924 Sir Edward Cadogan Conservative MP for Reading 1922–1923 and Bolton 1940–1945
1935 John Crowder Conservative
1959 Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher Conservative Later Baroness Thatcher; Leader of the Conservative Party 1975-90; Prime Minister 1979-90
1992 Hartley Booth Conservative
1997 constituency abolished

Now here's the same thing with the Canadian style box:

Members of Parliament

Parliament Years Member Party Notes
31st 1918–1922     John Newman Conservative MP for Enfield 1910–1918
32nd 1922–1923
33rd 1923–1924     Thomas Atholl Robertson Liberal
34th 1924–1929     Sir Edward Cadogan Conservative MP for Reading 1922–1923 and Bolton 1940–1945
35th 1929–1931
36th 1931–1935
37th 1935–1945     John Crowder Conservative
38th 1945–1950
39th 1950–1951
40th 1951–1955
41st 1955–1959
42nd 1959–1964     Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher Conservative Later Baroness Thatcher; Leader of the Conservative Party 1975-90; Prime Minister 1979-90
43rd 1964–1966
44th 1966–1970
45th 1970–Feb 1974
46th Feb 1974–Oct 1974
47th Oct 1974–1979
48th 1979–1983
49th 1983–1997
50th 1987–1992
51st 1992–1997     Hartley Booth Conservative
Constituency abolished


Is any active editor seriously advocating the above format with the amount of space it takes to say the same thing, or can I revert Doncaster North (UK Parliament constituency) and others to the standard format?

I see no reason to change. The Canadian format adds nothing of importance, sufficient to justify the added space it takes. --Gary J (talk) 12:16, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
(ec)My initial instinct was to say just "yes, revert", because the example you give is so visually bulky, and also because it involves far too much markup, which hinders maintenance. I do that that think that the bulky Doncaster North example should be reverted .... but I also the idea of listing all elections is worth considering.
Two years ago I reworked all the list of TDs in Irish constituencies to produce tables which show every election: see for example Carlow-Kilkenny. I created a set of templates for the purpose ({{Irish TD table begin}} etc, undocumented, I'm afraid), and the result has uncontroversial, so I think they work.
In general they are more bulky than bare lists, but the more seats that are involved the less bulk is added by listing all the elections, and I reduced the bulk by reducing the size of the text.
The Irish situation is different, because all constituencies have been multi-seat since 1921 ... but until 1885, most English constituencies were multi-member, and the last two-seaters only went in 1950. I think we should experiment with a few sample constituencies and see how a more compact form would work. Removing the "cellpadding=5" would be a start, smaller text size would be another, and one column in the example above is redundant. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:53, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
more compact version of Finchley
Election Member Party Notes
1918 John Newman Conservative MP for Enfield 1910–1918
1922
1923 Thomas Atholl Robertson Liberal
1924 Sir Edward Cadogan Conservative MP for Reading 1922–1923 and Bolton 1940–1945
1929
1931
1935 John Crowder Conservative
1945
1950
1951
1955
1959 Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher Conservative Later Baroness Thatcher; Leader of the Conservative Party 1975-90; Prime Minister 1979-90
1964
1966
1970
Feb 1974
Oct 1974
1979
1983
1987
1992 Hartley Booth Conservative
1997 Constituency abolished
Better I have to say, and I deliberately overgilded the lily (as you will all know) to show what would happen in extreme cases. Yes I agree it's worth considering doing something going forward but not what is there at the moment. What I would like is a concensus to revert, and then start experimenting. My other objection - other than waste of space - was to parliament numbers which really doesn't work with by-elections, defections, sackings etc. and that is addressed in the example BHG provides.
Where I want to get to eventually is a point where we split down the articles because we have too much detail in the main article. I will come back to this later and maybe it's best discussed on a different thread but I would take a cut off either at 1950 (major constituency reorganisation after the war) or more radically at 1983 (reorganisation leaving two governments with small majorities, two safe Labour governments, two safe Tory governments). Using the 1950 example on what BHG provides gives:
more compact version of Finchley chopping at 1950
Election Member Party Notes
1950 John Crowder Conservative
1951
1955
1959 Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher Conservative Later Baroness Thatcher; Leader of the Conservative Party 1975-90; Prime Minister 1979-90
1964
1966
1970
Feb 1974
Oct 1974
1979
1983
1987
1992 Hartley Booth Conservative
1997 Constituency abolished
I quite like that as it gives all the detail and the bulk has gone - but it has an obvious dependency of splitting off "historical" articles. Maybe not a discussion for now so I'd like agreement for reversion of any Canadian examples, at least for now. Crooked cottage (talk) 13:34, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
As laudable as all this "tidying" is, and my technological knowledge is nil so well done for being able to produce all these, I worry that our time it being taken up looking at tables rather than the floods outside the window. I would say that any of these kinds of issues should be dealt with after May, which will be one of the busiest times any of us on this project has ever known. There are lots of tasks - as I have written above - that have much more importance in the larger context than if a table shows one year or two. Please don't read this in a snarky manner, I really don't mean to come across as angry, but this sort of distraction could leave us with a lot of catch-up...doktorb wordsdeeds 13:47, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Fair point, and taken as meant - but I'm seeking permission to revert two or three articles here. The ideas for the future are useful but just that - ideas for the future. Crooked cottage (talk) 14:13, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
As above, I agree that the bulky tables for Donacster N etc should be reverted.
I would be opposed to splitting articles by date. Things are much more easily managed if we stick to one-to-one relationship between articles and constituencies. If I misunderstood your proposal, and you are suggesting splitting the tables of MPs, I think that's an idea worth looking at.
As to Doktorbuk's concerns about May (which I presume refer to the Welsh and Scottish elections), I think that the two tasks of historical coverage and current coverage will continue to proceed in parallel, depending on what set of articles individual editors choose to work on. Some editors will be working on the Welsh and Scottish elections, which is great ... but I will continue to focus on Westminster, partly because I'm more interested in the history than in the current events and partly because I have forked out for a four-foot-high pile of reference books to allow me to improve the historical coverage. For example, I just tidied up the MPs list for Downton (a borough disenfranchised in 1832), by linking the elections and footnoting the by-elections. If other editors don't want to join in that work, I won't complain :) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:15, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Members of Parliament and elections sections would be fine by me to split to avoid the bulk - maybe open a different section as I want this to focus on my original point?Crooked cottage (talk) 15:43, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
Hats off to you BHG :) I will continue to do all I can for the current constituencies and elections (tbh, this is the discussion I think could be had further up at "Operation May" :) As for 'off shooting' constituency articles, do you mean ALL at an arbirary date? doktorb wordsdeeds 15:59, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Splitting constituency articles

To avoid the danger of us going off at a tangent on a thread about Canadian MP boxes (which of course would never happen :)) I'm opening a thread about how we might - in the future - split out bulk of election results and MP tables. It would have to happen at an arbitrary point - if we do anything. I've seen thoughts which say to split at a Reform Act which I suspect is too early to reduce bulk in many circumstances. I'm proposing as a starting point 1950 as this is an election of considerable boundary change, and it gives us sufficient data that anyone just looking for modern data will be satisfied.

I've no great attachment to this particular proposal - I just feel that we are going to need to do something, particularly as the Elections section grows (and it does, every weekend). If we go with a similar suggestion to what BHG made, the MP section will expand and any constituency created before 1885 will be bulky. Thoughts? Crooked cottage (talk) 18:46, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I would say the only significant problems come with constituency names which existed in the pre-Reform era and still exist today - a very small set of constituencies. I don't see many advantages to forcing all the constituencies to divide at a particular point. If they were forced to divide then I would argue against 1950, which was a time of significant boundary change but not a great political change. Splitting in 1918 would be far more appropriate - major boundary change, entirely new political system, near-universal franchise. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:40, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
See the thread above though - we'd still end up with some quite large articles. I also wonder how many "visitors" are interested in more than "recent" history: not something easy to ascertain. Beats 1885 as a suggestion though :) Crooked cottage (talk) 20:55, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
I can see lots of problems with a split, and I am struggling to see any benefit from the split.
The potentially-bulkiest constituency article I can think of is City of London, which was a 4-seater from 1298 to 1885, and a 2-seater from 1885 to 1950. In practice it's also our most detailed article, listing all election results and all MPs and all boundaries, with some political history. Yet even that constituency with the most MPs, and lots of detail, works fine with a split at 1707 ... so I don't see any need for a later split.
I just looked at a few other examples:
  • Bradford West (1885–1918, and 1955–present) includes all MPs and all election results. Boundaries need more expansion, but even with them completed I can't see it being anywhere near a size where a split would be needed.
  • St Albans was a 2-seat borough 1554–1852 and has been a single-seat county constituency since 1885. The article lists all MPs since 1660 (plus a few before), and has complete election results since 1885. It needs more on the boundaries, but even with that expanded, and earlier election results included, it would still be a perfectly manageable size.
  • Cheltenham is a borough established in 1832, and has had one seat since then. The list of MPs is compact, and although there are not many election results, the example of St Albans shows how using {{compact election box}} would allow then all to be included without undue bulk.
The visual bulk of some articles comes from using the hideously space-wasting {{election box}} format. Sam Blacketer commented in Sept 2009 that 'I just don't think the current election boxes are "fit for purpose"', and I agree ... which is why I drew up {{compact election box}}, incorporating all the concerns expressed here (and thanks again to all those whose feedback helped to improve the various drafts). I think we do need to look again at whether we could get some sort of automated or semi-automated method of conversion ... but however we do the conversion, it seems to me that's the way to reduce bulk.
So that's why I think a split is not needed. But I also think that a split is a bad idea of itself, to be avoided if possible.
The newspaper websites (e.g. The Guardians' politics pages, such as Cheltenham) cover only recent elections, and that's fine for a newspaper, because they focus on recent events. However, this is not a newspaper, it's an encyclopedia: we are not in the business of sweeping the past out of the way to keep a focus on the present. Our job here is to present both past and present, without favouring one over the other, and certainly without decrying pre-1950 material as "not modern". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:12, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Interesting thoughts. I agree there is a need to accommodate both the psephologist and the historian here, and of course those working principly on older material and the material they create are just as important as the new material authors and their content. The point I was making was that I couldn't support an increase in the size of the MP box without archiving. I fully support the move to the compact election box and I think this will help. I agree that Bradford North looks great in this format, but what if we had a by-election in Lincoln? The relevant psephological information is summarised in the head (mainly, no explanation about Taverne) but it's a long way down to the bottom of the MP table if you are paging rather than using the index. My reaction in this case would be to want to expand the head, but WP:HEAD has advice on this - and quite rightly.
OK, it's an extreme example of a current bellwether constituency being created centuries ago with a change in electoral profile happening in the 70s, and in general I don't think there is an answer which satifies everyone. But to do nothing means increase in volume leading to decreased usability. I'm sure no-one wants me to stop adding election results into articles. So - what are the real objections to using the compact election box for Westminster constituencies only for now(other than not to lose people's focus on May)? As I've said on at least one occasion, I have a semi-automated way of doing this which I can improve to turn into an automated way if I had support to continue. Maybe we need a new thread if it looks like there is agreement in principle. Thanks. Crooked cottage (talk) 19:03, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Crooked Cottage, you are looking at this from the wrong perspective. If you want the MPs box to be curtailed, just make it a hide/show information box. So what if there's a by-election in Lincoln? The whole point behind having single articls for each constituency is to provide a very clear, and very precise, indication as to how the history of certain seats waxed and waned. Please don't go off on your own, this is vitally important. There are some "improvements" which will ruin the project; don't split constituency articles. doktorb wordsdeeds 19:25, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
There is a by-election in Lincoln with a very good article about it. Sam Blacketer (talk) 19:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Indeed there is! And that's not the point I was trying to make....If the current MP for Lincoln drops dead tomorrow (and I hope that doesn't happen), the by-election results box and winning MP would fit into the current article just as naturally and easily as would it happen at a newly created constituency. I cannot see why there is a need to split articles. Wikipedia is not paper, information won't drop off the bottom! doktorb wordsdeeds 19:56, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Was actually responding to Crooked cottage but putting my response in where the discussion had got to. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:12, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Ah, hah, I've gone and confused matters! Well, think I've made my point....doktorb wordsdeeds 20:13, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
OPPOSE. I csnnot accept any split, as BHG has outlined with usual sense and reason. If an average person wanted to research Somewhere (UK Parliament constituency), Wiki should allow them to do just that; making it harder or more obscure only makes their experience of Wiki less enjoyable and our role as editors more difficult to defend. Why should the local government reorganisation act as some kind of arbitary cut-off point for constituency articles? Local government changes, constituencies often remain. I really am worried that all this boils down to a sense of boredom and irritation rather than a will to make the project better. There are far fewer regular editors these days, let's not get into a situation where we can't trust who remains to do the right things for the greater good of the project as a whole. Please do not split constituency articles doktorb wordsdeeds 18:28, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Withdrawn. I fully respect what people are saying here. Crooked cottage (talk) 20:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
  1. ^ Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "F"
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