Talk:List of members of the Swiss Federal Council

Some notes prior to a WP:FLC run...

...as requested, in no particular order:

• The fields containing dates do not sort correctly. They probably need to be in the ISO YYYY-MM-DD format for that. The conventional date form can still be displayed as the wikilink label.

Hum... but then we lose the linking of the date, which means we won't display the date according to the user's preferences anymore...

Yes. I don't know what the optimal solution would be. Sandstein (talk) 06:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

• Shouldn't the name field sort by last name, if technically possible? This may require creating redirects such as Ogi, Adolf → Adolf Ogi for each councillor.

Geez... that's quite ugly :-). I looked at other similar lists from WP:FL, and the "solution" was simple: they did not use sortable tables ! I don't really know what to do; I don't know if it is worth it.

List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, a featured list, has this feature. Apparently it works like this: name=<span style="display:none">Ogi, Adolf</span>[[Adolf Ogi]]. Sandstein (talk) 06:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

• Article title: "List of members of the Swiss Federal Council by date of election" doesn't really hit the mark, because the table can be sorted by any of a number of criteria. I recommend renaming this article to just "List of members of the Swiss Federal Council" and move the other List of members of the Swiss Federal Council to something like "Composition of the Swiss Federal council", while moving the statistics in that article to a separate article.
• The heading "List of members of the Swiss Federal Council who declined election" is inaccurate. These people were never members of the Council precisely because they declined. I recommend "List of people who declined their election to the Federal Council", although that may belong into a separate statistics article, too.

This is an interesting question. It is not what I understand from the Federal Council web site; see http://www.admin.ch/ch/e/cf/br/index3.html for example: "Members of the Federal Council who declined election". If I pick Francis Matthey in the list, he is indicated as "Successor to Federal Councillor René Felber" and "Predecessor of Federal Councillor Ruth Dreifuss", which gives him some position as an Councellor (some, because Ruth Dreifuss is indicated as successor of René Felber, not Francis Matthey !). Also interesting is the fact that the only date recorded in this database is the election date (e.g. 12 December for Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf), not the date the person accepted (13 December in this case), nor when the mandate started (1 January). This seem to indicate that one is a Federal Councillor as soon as he is elected, even if he refuses afterwards. But it is a bit strange; I could check.

That's really strange. I very briefly reviewed the applicable laws, and the best I could find was art. 3 of the Parliament Act – «Tout élu qui refuse de prêter serment ou de faire la promesse solennelle renonce à sa fonction.» – which I think means that, because these people never took the oath of office, they declined the office itself and were never Councillors. I think the title of the Chancellery website is wrong in this respect, but we would probably need reliable sources to do it any other way. Sandstein (talk) 06:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

• The background colours for the non-FDP councillors are rather in-your-face, and with rare exceptions, Federal Councillors are not the in-your-face type of person. Couldn't we mute the colours a bit?

Hum... I have tried to mute them already (e.g. SPS does not use a pure red...), but the goal was to stay close to the colours associated with the parties; if you have suggestions...

No, I'm bad at HTML, I just think that the loud colours make the table difficult to read (blue link text on orange background?) No other featured list I remember has such a colour scheme. Sandstein (talk) 06:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

• The names of the parties have changed, too, at least that of the SVP. We'd need to note that as well.
• "Notes and References" should be split up in "Footnotes" and "References".
  • The former should use {{reflist}}, and
  • the latter should use the proper {{cite web}} et al. templates.
• I would omit the brackets around the canton codes for the more recent Councillors, as well as footnote 2. This doesn't provide any information about the specific office-holder.
• Image:Bundesrat der Schweiz 2008 Teil 1.JPG is marked as PD. If the Federal Chancellery owns the copyright, and released it, shouldn't we have an OTRS record or something? If no such record is provided, it will be deleted on Commons at some point.

Hum... yeah, the licence was probably based on the fragment of email added to Image:Bundesrat Conseil Consglio Cussegl crop.jpg, but indeed this is not enough. I'll check with the chancellery.

• The lead would probably need some inline references, as you noted. (Yes, I know, I wrote much of that text in the Swiss Federal Council article. I intend to do a post-Blocher rewrite and properly source the whole thing, but haven't gotten around to it.)

Otherwise, the list looks very good indeed, and should have a good chance of passing WP:FLC. Sandstein (talk) 22:15, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments; as you can see I have added my replies (if I haven't written anything, it means I agree entirely with your comment). Schutz (talk) 22:48, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Title

I'm not entirely happy with the title to which this was just moved (List of members of the Swiss Federal Council). A straight forward list such as this seems less suitable for councils as opposed to offices held by a single person (List of Presidents of the United States). How about moving this to List of members of the Swiss Federal Council by seniority. -- User:Docu

Perhaps you mean "by date of election"? Since it's a sortable table, unlike in the other article, adding a qualifier would be misleading, I think. The current title is appropriate – it's a list of individual members. That title does not hide the fact that the Council is a collegial office. Sandstein (talk) 06:32, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Given that I performed the move, I obviously agree with Sandstein here. This list is the one that gives most information about the member themselves; the other list is more about the council itself (its composition in particular). I agree that the name of the other list is not perfect, but don't have any better idea. Most importantly, I think, both lists are well cross-referenced (even more though with the new navbox at the end of the page), so it is easy to find one if you know the other. Schutz (talk) 12:34, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

As it's a council, I feel the primary presentation should be by members serving at the same time, thus I'd go for the other list (List of members of the Swiss Federal Council by date) as the list without a qualifier in the title, even if this one (List of members of the Swiss Federal Council by date of election) has added information, such as DOB/DOD and departments held. -- User:Docu

I have tried to look at similar lists; I have found List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, which is mainly structured like our list (although it contains timelines as well), but not many others. All the documents I have looked at (see references) show the list in this format, which makes me think that it is what people expect in priority (don't misunderstand me here: I think the other list is very useful and very much worth having). I don't know; is there anyone else around with an opinion ? Schutz (talk) 14:00, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

List of members of the Académie française does it by seat. -- User:Docu

I think we can agree that the seats, by themselves, hold no significance except to record who succeeded whom. The key thing about the other page is the ability to see the composition of the Council changing over time. It's not really a list, it's an article with statistics about the composition of the Council that are presented in table format instead of prose (as per WP:NOT#STATS). I think Composition of the Swiss Federal Council or similar would be better for the other article. Sandstein (talk) 22:53, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

It is more a timeline then, but it remains in the realm of lists (see the criteria); I agree with Docu that this is not what I expect to find in Composition of the Swiss Federal Council — I would rather expect detailed information about the magic formula, some statistics about the holders, etc (what is currently in Demographics of the Swiss Federal Council). Schutz (talk) 23:25, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

FLC

I'll go for Wikipedia:Featured list candidates tonight or tomorrow, if none of you has any objection (the article must be stable in order to become a featured list; that's why I am checking first here to make sure that the discussion on the title, which seems minor to me, is not a problem). Schutz (talk) 17:42, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Very good! I've done a copyedit on the lead and removed some paragraphs that I think are not really necessary for the understanding of this list (feel free to revert, of course). Sandstein (talk) 22:45, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Very late for the party, but just wanted to point out that Urs Altermatt's Die Schweizer Bundesräte – Ein biographisches Lexikon (ISBN 3-7608-0702-X) uses a table with seven columns, one for each seat. The advantage is greater transparency as to the council's composition (by name, canton, or party affiliation) at any given time. The disadvantage is obviously far more bulk and less transparency for someone who simply wishes to go through the councillors chronologically. Now, ignore and carry on, I don't have access to the book right now anyway. ---Sluzzelin talk 12:37, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

We do have this format at List of members of the Swiss Federal Council by date. Sandstein (talk) 12:57, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Ooh, good job, thanks! ---Sluzzelin talk 12:59, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Sequence

Thanks for adding the "Sequence" field - does it mean seat / nth holder thereof? The code should probably be explained and a source given (the Altermatt table?). Sandstein (talk) 18:46, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

The sequence allows to sort the table by successors. It's based on List of members of the Swiss Federal Council by date. I will go and have a look at the Altermatt table. -- User:Docu

Thanks. I only now see that the FLC is already live; the question has also been asked there. Sandstein (talk) 19:07, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

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