Talk:1942 Chichester by-election

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Candidate information

Most better developed by-election articles contain a section headed 'Candidates' which provided some basic biographical material on the candidates. I have (repeatedly) added full name and military rank detail for one candidate. This is information I would expect to see in such an article, particularly the information of rank for a war-time by-election. I presented this information in the simplist and most logical way, as part of the link to a red linked article about that candidate. Another editor has (repeatedly) deleted this information. They do not dispute the accuracy of the information but seem to dispute that it should be in the article at all.Graemp (talk) 08:29, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The red link is to direct to a prospective page, and policy is that it should be direct to a valid article title. It is inappropriate to include a middle name not commonly used to refer to a person, just as for a blue link. If you create a stub page this enables additional biographical information to be set down, which isn't directly relevant to the by-election. Inclusion of military rank in a page about an election is arguable - personally I don't think it adds anything - but as a compromise edit I have taken it out of the red link retained in the article as standard black text. MapReader (talk) 04:56, 18 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is no relevant policy regarding what should appear to the immediate right of a valid link, red or blue. It is common practice for prefixes and other forenames to be added to the right hand side in articles where appropriate. Your 'compromise edit' still removes information for no reason and unnecessarily splits a unifiable piece of information half in and half outside the link presentation. I have restored the information and restored the best presentation. Graemp (talk) 07:44, 18 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

An edit is not acceptable if it removes basic information from an article which is what your edit does, regardless of it being a compromise. There is no consensus that links to names on election pages should be in Common name format. Such a consensus only refers to election tables and this edit is not in a table. There is no WP policy that supports your position. It is a common article writing style both inside and outside wikipedia to mention somebody's name in full in the body of the article, the first time the article refers to them. To delete information from the body of an article as you have is vandalism - please stop now.Graemp (talk) 12:08, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]