Template talk:Election box/Archive 1

Uncontested Elections

I'm using this template in our local wiki Wyfopedia and I have come accross an uncontested election. How do you handle uncontested elections? --Tavis Pitt 11:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Templates need to move

Pages like Labour Party (UK)/meta/color should not be in the main namespace. If they are, then they will be treated as articles and show up in places like Special:Shortpages. Is there any reason for them not to all be moved to the template namespace since they are being used as templates? Angela. 12:26, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

Angela, is there something intrinsically wrong with them showing up on Special:Shortpages, they are intentionally short pages? I could add about 10k of comments to them if that would help ;-). Putting them in the Template namespace doesn't make them any longer and just, well... hides them. They are similar in nature to subpages like {{Wikipedia:Village pump (news)}} which clearly does not belong in the Template namespace. Just because they are referenced using the same syntax as a template does not mean that they are are, in any way, a template. They are content that is included and rendered in an article in the same way that {{Wikipedia:Village pump (news)}} is included in the {{Wikipedia:Village pump}} article. 80N 13:40, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

The difference is that these pages are very unlikely to be used by anything other than templates. The Village pump pages, however, are meant to be used seperately, and are being included like templates on WP:VP to have a central point to work with. Plus, pages in the Wikipedia: namespace don't show up as articles in the statistics. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 20:27, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Color vs Colour

Any reason why the American spelling of color/colour was chosen? Jooler 11:52, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Yes:
  • The short answer is that these templates are not UK specific and so using British spelling didn't seem appropriate.
  • The long answer is that many North Americans that I've come across consider colour to be a mis-spelling and, to them, just plain wrong. On the other hand, most Brits consider color to be merely the American spelling of the word. I'm not going to speculate here on why that is the case, but in my experience, that's the way it is.
  • Given that the templates are not UK specific, they are more likely to be used for elections in other countries if they do not have a provincial flavour to them, hence I plumped for color rather than colour.
  • One other consideration was that the kind of Wikipedia editor that would be setting up this kind of page is likely to be more IT literate and will most likely be familiar with the html color attribute, and can see that this is consistent in that respect. The average Wikipedia editor, who is just using these templates does not even need to be aware of these pages, once they are set up for each party then the templates deal with all that (which is the whole point of this approach).
  • 80N 16:03, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
    • This is English Wikipedia, the spelling of colour is used in British English, Australian English, Hiberno-English, Indian English, Caribbean English, Hong Kong English New Zealand English, Malaysian English, South African English and Jamaican English etc. and more besides. I see no reason to favour American spellings in the international context when International English leans towards the British variety. Indeed Wikipedia accepts that British English can and should be used in international contexts. The fact that some Americans are ignorant of non-American spellings is a failing on their part and the ignorance should not be encouraged. Jooler 16:22, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • We have a manual of style that addresses this issue: WP:MOS#National_varieties_of_English. Summary: Because 80N, the initial author, chose United States English spellings, we stick with that, even though the initial author talked about the "Labour" party. ☺ Uncle G 23:34, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)
        • I don't think the MoS is relevant in this context, but in any case it might not be relevant anymore as there seems to be some discussion about the /meta/color pages being innappropriate. Would it be possible for all of the party colours to be contained in a single template, so that easy comparison could be made? Jooler 23:46, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
          • As far as I know there is no way to reference just a section of a document for inclusion in another document, otherwise that would be a nice way of grouping these fragments together. To me, the ability to locate these page fragments is quite important, currently they are located by being named relative to the party that they belong to. 80N 10:55, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
          • The primary purpose of the /meta/color page is to supply the value of the HTML color attribute for rendering some text, line or background on a web-page. It is very definitely not a description of the chosen colour of each political party. For example, it would not be appropriate to describe the colour of the Labour party as #CC0000, but that is the value of /meta/color for that party. If a page fragment were needed that described the colour of the party then I would support using /meta/colour for that, but a page fragment that provides a value for the HTML color attribute must be called, if we are to be rational, /meta/color. 80N 10:55, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Change in Proportion of Vote

Is the percentage change for the candidate, the party or either? For instance, a constituency I just edited has a candidate who has switched allegiance to a new party (that has not had candidates there before)? Should I put the candidate's change in votes based on his previous party? Possibly, in cases like this, we should put both to make it clear.

--Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _{talk contrib} 13:18, 2005 May 6 (UTC)

• I think it really has to refer to the party not the candidate. If the Conservative Party puts up a different candidate from one electio to the next then the change refers to the party's fortunes not the candidate's. If a Labour candidate defects and stands as an independent then the %age change should probably be recorded as N/A. 80N 17:26, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

That is what I assumed (and did accordingly put the candidate down as if he had no votes last election). I was a bit unsure though because this candidate is changing from one party to another and the parties aren't really rivals (that tend to stand aganist each other). There should really be rules on this though. Are you saying that all parties that haven't stood before should be `N/A'?--that doesn't seem to be the practice, but it does make a lot more sense IMO.

--Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _{talk contrib} 17:36, 2005 May 6 (UTC)

Swing

Shouldn't there be some way of saying who the swing is too (as this isn't immediately obvious)?

Also, maybe "swing" should be linked to a definition of the term.

--13:18, 2005 May 6 (UTC)

• Yes, I've been wondering about this. I think the swing should always be relative to the winning party and should be a positive number if they increased their majority and a negative number if their majority was reduced. In most cases this is relative to whichever party is in second place. If the second place party is different from that in the previous election then I'm not sure what to do. The concept of swing only really works with a two horse race. When there are three parties in contention I think there is (theoretically) a swing between each pair of parties. 80N 17:18, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Exactly. As a swing can be between any two parties, when mentioning a swing, we should always say who the giver and receiver of the swing are (" swing: n from foo to bar"), otherwise it doesn't make sense.

--Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _{talk contrib} 18:42, 2005 May 6 (UTC)

Whilst it might be nice to hope swing is always relative to the winning party, it often isn't. In reality, the creation of a 'percentage swing' figure is fairly misleading where there are three or more parties in contention. --Vamp:Willow 16:41, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

It would be nice if Swing was a parameter that only appeared if someone filled out the "swing" field. Unfortunately I'm not skilled enough in wikimarkup to do that - if anyone knows how to, it would be great. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 06:45, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

By-election results boxes

Is anyone able to produce result boxes for:

• Seats where the party who won at the last general election regains the seat lost in a in between by-election? (e.g. Leicester South)
• Seats where the by-election loss is duplicated at the general election? (e.g. Brent East)
• Seats where the seat is gained from one party who won the last general election and another who won the by-election? (The only one I can think of to hand is Fermanagh & South Tyrone between 1979, the two 1981 by-elections and 1983)

Ideally I'd go for "treat the by-election as just another election", but this can cause confusion, especially when boundaries change and because gains/losses are traditionally measured against the last general election. Timrollpickering 14:34, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

• The title is general purpose enough to enable both the event (general election, by-election, presidential election, whatever) and the constitency name to be entered. Constituencies do change names from time to time (Anglesea, for example) without any boundary changes. When there is a boundary change someone has to make a decision about whether this is the same constituency that just got a bit bigger/smaller or whether this is a brand new one. Look at the scottish constituencies for various ways this problem has been treated (Ayr, Carrick, and Cumnock (UK Parliament constituency)#Election results, Falkirk (UK Parliament constituency)#Election results). 80N 08:27, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Number and proportion of ballots spoilt & campaign expenditures

Can we have this somewhere as it is quite interesting and it makes it clear why the turnout is greater than the sum of the votes for each candidate? I don't think there is any point in having the percentages for different types of spoiling (i.e.: unstamped, multiple votes, voter identifiable, unmarked or uncertain). --Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _{talk contrib} 19:05, 2005 May 6 (UTC)

• Easy enough to create one, I'll do it sometime if someone else doesn't get to it sooner. 80N 08:27, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
• I have been adding this into the BC provincial electoral districts. Example here, it is not perfect (does not explicitly say the # of registered voters) but it does the job. I believe a more important issue that is not being addressed is the campaign expenditures for each candidate. This data can shed a whole bunch of light on a first-past-the-post election and affect analysis. I am going to try and work this into another column.-maclean25 04:20, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
• I have added this in as a template since it's quite a significant factor in this years scottish parliament figures! Template:Election box rejected. Andy^talk 19:28, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Majority and Turnout Calculation

The rules for doing these (and other) calculations need to be made clearer; in fact, IMO, we should find a way to get the templates to do all the calculations automatically from the raw vote numbers, because editors will probably not stick to the rules.

For the percentages for change in majority and/or turnout, do we put:

• the percentage change of the number, and/or
• the percentage change of the proportion, and/or
• the difference between the turnout percentages?

Also, is the turnout as a proportion of those registered and/or those eligible to register, and is the majority that of the incumbent and/or the winner? --Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _{talk contrib} 19:05, 2005 May 6 (UTC)

"turnout" is the number who cast a ballot (whether counted or spoilt) devided by the total number of eligible (registered) voters. "majority" is the difference between the winner and the person who comes second. --Vamp:Willow 16:38, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I suggest renaming "majority" into "margin of victory". It's unclear if the number for the majority row should be the excess votes for the winner over the runner-up or over the half-way mark. In a multi-way race, the victor might not even have a majority. -- JLM (talk) 15:59, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Metadata proposal

There's been considerable discussion about the partyName/meta/color pages and I think it's probably now time to put forward a proposal for renaming them.

Goals

1. The purpose of these page fragments is to provide a way of referencing a piece of data about a subject (in this case a political party) based solely on the name of the article being referenced. This enables a template to have just one argument rather than two or three or more.
2. A secondary purpose is to promote consistency. Any page that wants to include a piece of information about a subject can reference a single common source rather than picking some value that just seems right. For example, the colour of the labour party is #CC0000, but #FF0000 (red) can easily get used by editors who cannot find a correct value.
3. Another goal is ease of maintenance. If the Labour party changes it's official colour from red to blue then only one page change is necessary rather than 650 or more.

Issues

In the discussions about this mechanism the following issues and questions have been raised:

1. Should the /meta/color page be called /meta/colour?
2. Should these pages be in the article namespace or the template namespace?
3. Short pages such as these in the article namespace will be listed on Special:Shortpages.
4. Other pages exist that already contain this information (eg Template:British politics/party colours/Labour contains bgcolor="#DC241f").

Proposal

Pages of this kind that contain non-parameterised information fragments that are intended to be included in the body of a main article should be, in general, named as follows:

Template:group/identifier(s)/attribute

In the case of political parties used by the Election box templates (inter alia) the pages should be named:

Template:Political party/articleName/attribute

For example:

1. Template:Political party/Labour Party (UK)/color
2. Template:Political party/Labour Party (UK)/shortName

Since searching of the Template namespace is not easy, an index page should be created at the group level listing all of the entries for that group and enumerate the attributes that are being used. eg Template:Political party might contain:

 Attributes:
   */color - the value for an html color attribute
   */shortName - the common name or abbreviation in a local context
  
 Members:
   /Labour Party (UK)
     /Labour Party (UK)/color
     /Labour Party (UK)/shortName

   /Conservative Party (UK)
     /Conservative Party (UK)/color
     /Conservative Party (UK)/shortName

In addition, the talk page of each referenced page should provide a link to each of the meta data pages for ease of reference and maintenance.

Impact

The existing Election box templates can easily be changed to use the new naming scheme. Approximately 30 meta data pages exist in the article namespace that would need to replicated under the new names before the Election box templates could be modified.

Other templates that duplicate this information, such as Template:British politics/party colours/Labour which contains bgcolor="#CC0000" should be modified to:

 bgcolor="{{Political party/Labour Party (UK)/color}}"
 

Discussion

This seems like a really good idea to me - I've created metadata for some results from the 1997 election that I was filling in today, and they've both been marked for speedy deletion. >:-( Should I be working differently for now, or is this a work in progress? Vashti 19:09, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

• Seems like the speedy deletion guys are way too speedy. What's more, adding the speedy delete tag to the page really messes things up. All you can do is a) delete the speedy delete tag and b) add a note to the page's talk page that points to here. In theory they should be just as zealous about flagging up templates but I bet they aren't. Until the proposed changes are implemented I'd say carry on regardless. 80N