Talk:2017 Copeland by-election

Referendum Results

Was wondering about the referendum results - Copeland District makes up only 86% of the constituency and as results for the Brexit vote were not released by constituency, the Guardian appears to be citing the result for Copeland district, as opposed to the whole seat. As with the Richmond Park article, I would suggest we use the statistics compiled by Chris Hanretty, Reader in Politics at UEA:

Info: https://medium.com/@chrishanretty/the-eu-referendum-how-did-westminster-constituencies-vote-283c85cd20e1

Numbers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wTK5dV2_YjCMsUYlwg0l48uWWf44sKgG8uFVMv5OWlA/edit#gid=893960794

His data model suggests that the Leave vote for the whole seat was 60%, as opposed to 62%. My proposal would be that we cite this instead; thoughts? FriendlyDataNerd (talk) 18:38, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

UNDUE prominence given to Labour's shortlist

Currently, the Labour shortlist is more prominent than the list of declared candidates. No other party's section has a wikimarkup table listing candidates and it seems quite unnecessary. There's no detailed information in the table that could not be adequately covered by prose. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 08:35, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

The table seems unnecessary to me too. A list of names in prose would be fine. But I have no deep feelings on this either way. The best solution to concerns about prominence is perhaps to find out more on the other parties' selection processes. Bondegezou (talk) 09:41, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I disagree. It's only prominent because there's nothing for other parties. Maybe there will be as the by-election develops. I chose to create the table in that way because it's rare for our by-election articles to cover selection and shortlisting in ways quite common in other equivalent articles covering other countries. If it's decided to remove the table, fair dos, but I think additional information about candidate selection has relevance. doktorb _words^deeds 10:26, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I think the table made sense when the list was much longer, but with just three candidates prose would be sufficient. Jdcooper (talk) 10:28, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

External links to campaign pages

@Jdcooper: I have seen other Wikipedia articles include links to campaign websites and I think that falls will allowable external links policy. We need to make sure it is done in a neutral way however. Bondegezou (talk) 13:42, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

My view: if they're included in the infobox, then include them in external links as well. See Richmond Park by-election, 2016; campaign links are provided. Mélencron (talk) 17:21, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

4 main parties all Women Candidates

Just an observation but I do think it is a significant one. This is the first UK Parlimentary by-election where candidates from all 4 of the main UK wide parties; Labour, Conservative, UKIP and Liberal Democrat have all fielded women as their candidates.

It seems that this hasn't been intentionally done either, I can't see that there were any all women short lists or that the women were given any advantage in the selection process. Indeed it seems the women faced competition from male candidates and gained their parties selection based on merrit in open processes.

Many would consider this to be some kind of milestone, I was wondering what people think to including it in the article somehow? I am surprised no one else has picked up on this point. 2407:7000:875B:C370:6C29:16B0:BB81:1B4E (talk) 22:22, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

If a reliable secondary source comments on this we can include it. I agree with you that it's significant but to include it without a source would constitute original research, ie. it's the opinion of Wikipedia editors that it's important, not secondary sources. Jdcooper (talk) 22:39, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware Labour and the Liberal Democrats do use all-women shortlists behind closed doors, whereas the Conservatives use a procedure called the A-List (basically a gender balanced pool of potential candidates). I don't know enough about UKIP to comment, but I suspect they didn't take gender into account when selecting their candidate. I think it'd be risky to insert this comment into the page since it may be misleading. It might be worth asking your question to an expert outside Wikipedia to see if they can give a more informed opinion - Wikipedia probably isn't the place for taking the discussion further. Maswimelleu (talk) 10:01, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Firstly, it has been widely reported that the Labour candidate was selected as a result of a decision to only short-list women. A male, former Scottish Labour MP had publicly sought the nomination but was not shortlisted. Secondly, I don't think this should preclude an edit to the article that points to the fact that this by-election is the first in which all four of the largest parties candidates are female, assuming it is true. Graemp (talk) 10:39, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

It would still need to be sourced to avoid violating WP:OR. I had a quick look and I couldn't find any news outlets highlighting this aspect of the by-election, though I admit it was a quick look. Jdcooper (talk) 11:06, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Agree with Jdcooper: we need a source noting this.

PS: I don't think LibDems use all-women shortlists for Westminster selections, although there are gender equality rules for, e.g., London Assembly list slates. Bondegezou (talk) 11:11, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

The Lib Dems have used a policy called "zipping" for multi-seat constituencies (ie. man, woman, man, woman). The party passed a motion about 10 months ago mandating all-women shortlists for Parliamentary elections, but I'm not sure if it's in effect right now. It could be - hence why it'd be difficult to claim that 4 major party female candidates was unintentional. Maswimelleu (talk) 11:46, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

The Labour selection was an "All-Women Shortlist" in that the 3 shortlisted candidates were all women, but Labour selections are usually designated as AWS when the timetable is agreed by the NEC, and male candidates would be excluded from applying. It appears in this case that the AWS has happened almost "by accident" and that the top 3 candidates in the shortlisting process were women.

It's obviously not the same situation, but the top 4 candidates in Rotherham by-election, 2012 were women - Lab, UKIP, Respect, BNP. Frinton100 (talk) 17:06, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Ground Zero's edits

I respect User:Ground Zero's copyediting work greatly so I am explaining my re-edits in detail:

• "MP" is in far greater common usage than "member of parliament", which seems extremely clunky mid-text.
• "Reed formally resigned his seat" is necessary because he had announced his resignation informally prior to then.
• "Thomas Docherty had previously applied" is necessary because this sentence already uses the pluperfect and as such this emphasis is necessary to distinguish different points in the chronology.
• Regarding Paul Nuttall's antics, your edits obscured the actual events. His decision not to run in this by-election was made initially for one purposse, then later another higher purpose took over. Your edits imply that he did one thing, then did the other. In fact he didn't do the first thing, and did the second thing unsuccessfully. It can be difficult to accurately represent the complexity of Nuttall's failings, but we must try.
• I changed the wording of Lib Dems and Greens to reflect how those terms are most commonly used in news reports etc. Open to persuasion on this.
• "Roy Ivinson had previously stood..." - I know what pluperfect means, but the fact is that common English usage just sounds better with a "previously" in sentences like this. It's an emphasis thing, I think.

I know you hate certain words, we all have our bugbears, but sometimes those words add precision to the prose. Otherwise, keep up the excellent work. Jdcooper (talk) 03:47, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining your edits. It is about clarity in writing to make our articles more comprehensible. If you want to call that a "bugbear", okay, but I think we should strive to improve our writing, instead of writing just the way we are personally comfortable. We should put the reader first.

1. "MP" may be commonly used and understood in the UK and the Commonwealth, but this is an international encyclopaedia. Americans read "MP" to mean "Military Police", and other countries use it to mean other things. That is what WP:ACRONYM tells us to spell out acronyms the first time we use them. We're not helping readers when we write in code.
2. Reed announced that he would be resigning, and then resigned later. I know that you know what you mean when you make a distinction between "informally" and "formally", but other readers can't be expected to know what you mean. If he had resigned on 21 December, then he wouldn't have been an MP from then until 23 January. He clearly was MP until then. So it is better to make the distinction between "announced his intention to resign" and "resigned", which is clear and unambiguous, than to use terms that will not be clear to many readers like "informally" and "formally".
3. "Long-listed candidates had included Thomas Docherty, who was the MP for Dunfermline and West Fife from 2010-5 and had previously applied to be the Copeland candidate, before losing to Reed." The phrase "before losing to Reed" tells us the order of events. "Previously" gives us the same information, so it's redundant.
4. No, really, "initially" doesn't change the meaning here. A happened, then B happened. Writing that as 'A happened first (or "initially") then B happened' doesn't provide any more or different information to the read. If you read the before and after versions, they really do say the same thing.
5. I don't think redundancy sounds better. I think it is poor writing, and I am not alone in thinking that:

"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences.... This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." -- William Strunk Jr., in The Elements of Style (1918)

One of George Orwell’s famous six rules for writing, taken from “Politics and the English Language”: " (iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out."

Ground Zero | t 06:20, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

"If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out." Hmm... The final "it out" is redundant: "If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut." Orwell didn't even follow his own rule when writing it! That's because he knew that it isn't actually the only consideration. Bondegezou (talk) 09:21, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I agree with your point #1 and have reverted. I've also added "announced his intention to resign" because I agree that that is clearer. However, the use of "formally" makes it explicitly clear that that was when he fulfilled the administrative side of the resignation, even though everyone already knew what he was going to do. Given that we already mention he is going to resign, what reader in their right mind would imagine that the relevant meaning of "formally" here is the opposite of "informally"? And yet, because usually people resign with the act of announcing it, it does help the reader to draw the distinction between announcing it and formally doing it. Yes, if you parse the words carefully they mean the same thing, but why should we force our readers to parse the words carefully? Better to use a helpful adverb to emphasise the important information. I would use the same reasoning for the other examples. Since I first saw you make similar edits to another article, I have made many such edits myself and now realise how excessively some of these words are used. However, it does not follow that it is always true that we should omit the adverb. As Bondegezou said, Orwell's guideline was hardly an immutable law. Incidentally, Orwell could have said "If possible, cut a word out." That's not better English though. Jdcooper (talk) 09:39, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

User:Jdcooper: no-one is being asked to "break down a text into its component parts of speech with an explanation of the form, function, and syntactic relationship of each part" carefully. That is a red herring. Readers are only being asked to understand the sentences as they are written. If sentences are written simply and clearly, this is not an issue. It is only when sentences are convoluted or long that repetition is needed, and then it generally just makes things more difficult to understand. Verb tenses are basic elements of English, and the meaning of "resign" is not unclear to a reader of average competence in English. These are things we can reasonably expect readers to understand. Using adverbs to repeat information the reader has already received is not helping the reader. It is just boring or confusing them. If we say that he announced his intention to resign on one day, then resigned on another, there is no ambiguity. If A happened, then B happened, there is no ambiguity. So there is no need for emphasis. Average readers will understand simple, clear sentences. You may think that your style is better than George Orwell's but the Wikipedia Manual of Style endorses Strunk's advice. See WP:BECONCISE. Ground Zero | t 18:31, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Well I certainly do not think my style is better than Orwell's, but I defy you to find one reader who is either bored or confused by the expression "formally resigned" or use of an extra "previously" for clarity. Though I take your point about convoluted and long sentences, they are a widespread scourge on this encyclopaedia. Jdcooper (talk) 21:02, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

So should we remove the advice of Strunk from the Wikipedia style guide because you don't think redundancy is is bad style? "Clarity" can be used to justify any repetition and redundancy, but that is something we should strive to avoid. At least according to our style guide. Ground Zero | t 21:25, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

From that self same style guide: "Strunk and White, however, were unambiguous that concision does not require "the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." Deleting is not always equivalent to improving, and intelligently differentiating the cases deserves care." I couldn't agree more, and I consider the above examples as cases in point. Jdcooper (talk) 21:38, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

We're not talking about deleting details here. The sentences mean the same thing before and after the deletions. We're talking about deleting emphasis.

And don't confuse emphasis and clarity - they are two different things. The foreigner who doesn't understand what you are saying won't understand any better if you shout at him, despite what American tourists seem to think.

The emphasis in this case, does not provide clarity because it relies on the reader knowing what the writer is intending by "formally". We can't expect the reader to read our minds:

"The incumbent Labour MP Jamie Reed announced his intention to resign on 21 December 2016.... Reed formally resigned his seat on 23 January 2017."

This, on the other hand, provides clarity:

"On 21 December 2016, the incumbent Labour MP Jamie Reed announced his intention to resign his seat.... His resignation took effect on 23 January 2017."

In the other cases, no meaning is added, and no clarity is provided. Why not just use boldfacing or exclamation marks if you want emphasis? Well, because doing do is bad style. Ground Zero | t 01:10, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm happy with that as a compromise for the first case, I'll make the changes. As for the others, I think more clarity is provided by the addition of "previously", but it's clear we're not going to agree. Can any other editors help us arrive at some kind of consensus? Jdcooper (talk) 11:25, 8 March 2017 (UTC)