Template talk:Infobox election/Archive 1

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Needs to be more compact

Conceptually, I like having an infobox for presidential elections. I find myself missing the old election summaries that used to be at the top of every article (years ago). However, I think this box needs to be more compact, as the version as of this writing contains way more whitespace than most infoboxes have or should use. -- RobLa 18:06, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I did some looking, and it appears that one thing that would be a big help would be to fix the way that the "before this election"/"after this election" table row is rendered. There's currently an empty cell in the middle. Since this is a table, the minimum width of this cell in the table is the same as the picture above. In the Bush v Kerry example, this means that the cell will have a minimum width equal to the width of the George Bush picture. The HTML is straighforward to fix, but I can't decipher how to actually edit the template to make it generate the right HTML. -- RobLa 18:24, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I've been looking at the code and I'm sure it is fixable but I can't see how to do it either. Perhaps a temporary solution would be to reduce the size of the images. --Philip Stevens 20:12, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Before this election/After this election

Not sure if this is what you guys were discussing above, but on a lot of the election boxes for the different elections, the before_election person goes down an extra row while the after_election person stays all on one line. (in other words, at the bottom of the infobox, the person's name for before is split into 2 lines, while the person who won the election is kept all on one line, which SpiderMMB 22:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)looks strange) You can see this evidenced in the infoboxes on the pages United States presidential election, 1916, United States presidential election, 1920, United States presidential election, 1924, etc. etc. I don't even know where you can go to edit this field to fix it. Does anyone else know how to fix this? (Cardsplayer4life 01:20, 8 August 2007 (UTC))

On my browser, those pages look fine, but I can see what you mean on United States presidential election, 1956. The width of the before_election field is governed by the width of the first column, which only contains the field names, whereas the width of the after_election field is governed by the width of the third or forth column, which contains an image and so is bigger than the first column. The title field was supposed to fix this by lengthening the first column, but it tends to lengthen it too much which causes a large amount of white spaces (discussion above). I don't know how to fix this. --Philip Stevens 06:40, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Aah, ok. Well I don't know if it is just my browser then. The weird thing is that for the recent one with George W. Bush, the "before_election" person looks fine. I don't know if it is because he has a middle initial in there or what, but on most of them, it goes down an extra line. Hmmm, weird. It isn't a huge deal, I don't guess, but if someone sees this and knows how to fix it, it would be appreciated. I went to Template:Infobox Election and hit edit, but I couldn't figure out what to change to fix it, so I just left it like it was. (Cardsplayer4life 06:02, 9 August 2007 (UTC))

A different aspect of this feature: i changed the wording, partly because it seemed awkward and partly bcz it suggests that the election is/was effective immediately. It was only after doing so that it occurred to me that the second issue is not always a temporary one: some people win elections, and never take office:

they die first, or

get caught first and quit, or

the party they lead gets clobbered so badly that even tho they personally won, they

need to go away to give the new leadership clear room to maneuver or

prefer to get on with their next career.

In such a case, they never hold the office, and the old template wouldn't work right for that election.
Do please note that expressions like "President-elect" are demonstrably not an American peculiarity: in (IIRC, the first vocal number of) the second act of The Mikado, we find

Mikado: I'm the emperor of Japan...

Katisha: ...and I'm his daughter-in-law elect.

--Jerzy•t (call-me-the-citationeer-elect) 18:53, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Winner/Runner-Up

Moving this discussion from Talk:United_States_presidential_election,_2004#Winner.2FRunner-Up.

I have to voice my concern that this format is hurting the article. I will post this on a few notable election pages and hope that it's noticed. I have to admire the determination of whoever came up with this idea (it's apparently on every page) but ultimately, I think it should go. I think that having "winner/runner-up" displayed so prominently in the infobox overshadows the importance of the election. Some of these elections were not mere contests, but were epic events in American history where a variety of important viewpoints were symbolically represented and voted upon. Just in the last 50 years, the notable political climates of 1968 and 2004 came to a boiling point around election time. We should not be placing so much emphasis on the "winner" and the "runner-up" -- this is not a spelling bee. If we condense this into who "won" we are doing a disservice to the issues that drove these elections. SpiderMMB 23:13, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

When you say "I think it should go", do you mean "winner/runner-up" or the entire template? --Philip Stevens 05:31, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I think the entire template should go for the reasons listed above by Spider; he makes some very good points. I too think the infobox is, for one, odd. My issue with this is not so much the content, but formatting. The photos are of different sizes (see United States presidential election, 1984); some photos are b&w, some are color. Those look bad next to each other. I hope this discussion can bring about a change on all of the presidential election pages. Happyme22 06:13, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps then, reformatting of the template would be better than deletion. --Philip Stevens 07:21, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Discussions on reformatting would be fine too. When I said "should go" I meant the whole terminology of "winner/runner-up" as well as the pictures, and the whole emphasis that the infobox places on them. I have no problem with the electoral map, or even the statistics. But reformatting is definitely in order, so that the infobox does not envelope the article. SpiderMMB 19:46, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Reformatting should be done on the template's talk page. --Philip Stevens 21:44, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

As someone mentioned above, the entire infobox needs to be more compact. At the very least, the picture size should be toned down and the headings "winner" and "runner-up" should go. I would suggest instead that we list the person's political party (including for third party candidates -- so Strom Thurmond would be a "Dixiecrat" and Ross Perot would be "Reform," instead of listing them as third). Then we can simply have a note such as "elected" under the person who won. SpiderMMB 02:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we need the "winner/runner-up" box at all. It doesn't make sense. For each election outcome, the winner is the important part. In spite of the fact they call it a "race," in a US Presidential election, only the winner counts at the end. It would be different if the runner-up had some kind of importance after the election, but this is not the case. It used to be important before the constitution changed, but now, we don't need to know the runner-up. Hires an editor 15:32, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Canada

A couple of quick questions...this infobox isn't yet in use on Canadian election articles, but I'm currently in the process of preparing to start adding it. I currently have a test page set up at User:Bearcat/Canadian elections templates, but I have a couple of quick questions.

1. I have a popular vote map, Image:Canada2006.PNG, listed in the template's map field, but it's not showing up in the completed infobox. Can anybody help me identify why that is?
2. On the sample boxes shown in the template documentation, the "PM Before Election" and "PM After Election" tags at the very bottom of the box seem to change colour based on the hex codes that have been saved as each party's colour template — but on my test page, they've stayed black even though the colours are defined. Am I misunderstanding how this works, or have I coded something incorrectly?

I may have further questions before I actually start applying the template (and I may also need to ask for a couple of special mini-tweaks that kick in only if the country is flagged as Canada), but right now these are my two primary questions. Thanks. -- Bearcat (talk) 20:32, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

• I've fixed the problem with the map, so it should be displaying now. Use | before_colour = and | after_colour = to define the tags at the bottom of the box. I'd advise you to number the first, second, third and fourth parties 1, 2, 4, 5, respectively so you have two parties on top and two on the bottom. This removes white spaces and just makes the infobox look better. ---- Philip Stevens (talk) 21:17, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Yeah, I was concerned about the whitespace, but I was afraid that numbering the smaller parties 4 and 5 instead of 3 and 4 would cause their section titles to display as "fourth party" and "fifth party" instead of third and fourth. Thankfully it doesn't. The next challenge, though, is that for the 1993, 1997 and 2000 elections we have to contend with five parties in the infobox rather than four, so we're going to be left with whitespace in position #6. -- Bearcat (talk) 21:47, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Whitespace

Is there a way to reduce the amount of whitespace that separates the text information from the vote map in cases, such as Saskatchewan general election, 2007, where there's only a single row of parties to list? Bearcat (talk) 03:47, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'll work on removing it. Surprised no one else has brought this up considering the huge amounts of whitespace that appears everywhere. –Pomte 03:22, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not whitespace, those are table cells containing empty paragraphs. Obviously, the template leaves linebreaks where it shouldn't. Something Should Be Done.

Also, look how poor Premier-Elect is put into a column just as narrow as the party above. But there's a lot of place, and ideally the two should have an inner table with just two equally wide columns - and if I understand the mess of col-... templates, I think the template is even trying to do that, but apparently not succeeding - there's nothing like that in the page's code. --Malyctenar (talk) 11:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the format and coding of this template

I would like to discuss a few issues I have with this infobox:

1. It is way too cumbersome
   • When photos of politicians or election maps are added it expands horizontally, which therefore means that the text in the article will be overtaken by infobox, which should not be happening but is happening.
   • I believe the ideal size for an infobox is a fixed width between 20.5em and 22.5em with absolutely no chance of width expansion.
   • Any larger than that will not accommodate all the readers and contributors of these election articles
2. This infobox is POV when used for future legislative elections
   • The additions of the leaders of "Major" parties is POV as in these types of election surprises do happen a "minor" party could suddenly become a "major", as well, the addition of the leaders' pictures and singling out the so-called "major" paties would be a violation of WP:CRYSTAL as Wikipedia does not predict who or which party will win.

-- Avec nat...Wikipédia Prends Des Forces.  00:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Although Nat and I initially got off on the wrong foot in talking about this among ourselves, I'd like to stress that I agree with him about the design of the box. It may not be obvious on US elections where you generally only need to represent two parties, but in countries such as Canada or the UK where three, four or even five parties need to be shown in an election infobox, the addition of a third party per row does make the infobox wider than it should be in relation to the actual article. The arrangement of parties needs to be either one or two per row, tops. What I would like to see is a vertical arrangement with one party per row, photo to the left, party stats next to the photo instead of under it. But, of course, it's not up to me — I'm willing to accept any solution that recognizes that the current arrangement is problematic.

I'd also like to note that while I can't speak for any other country, at least in Canadian elections, the individual seat that each leader represents as a local MP is not important enough, within the context of the whole election, to merit mention in the infobox. And what does merit note, but isn't currently reflected in the infobox, is how party seat standings in the legislature have changed since the previous election. Due to resignations and byelections, for example, the Liberal Party of Canada caucus does not currently have the 103 seats that it won in the 2006 election, but has been reduced by eight seats and currently has 95. So the infobox on the subsequent election, by displaying seats at previous election rather than at dissolution of the legislature, presents a false picture of the election's actual context.

I don't agree with Nat about the POVness of having the infobox on a future election concentrate on "parties that are represented in the current session of the legislature, with the occasional addition, when necessary, of parties that are now polling strongly enough to have a real possibility of winning at least one seat" instead of listing every single registered political party in the country whether that party has ever won a seat in the House or not, but that's another issue.

I also must note that there hasn't been any response, positive or negative, to my earlier question about the whitespace that separates the party stats from the votemap on Saskatchewan general election, 2007. It needs to be reduced, and I would appreciate somebody acknowledging my question one way or the other. Bearcat (talk) 21:56, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Image sizes

Is there a way to make both images (or all three, in some cases) equally sized? Take the United States presidential election, 1980 and United States presidential election, 1984 articles; the picture of President Reagan is larger than that of President Carter, I'm guessing because of the red background behind his photo. But in the '84 article, Reagan's picture is a bit smaller and Mondale's is too big. It appears the problems are with the red or blue backgrounds, as they are differently sized in almost every presidential election article. Is there a way to fix this inconsistency? Happyme22 (talk) 02:16, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Italian general election

This is an idea for the next italian general election. It's so difficult. Please help me! Thank you so much

{{Infobox Election | election_name = [[Italian general election, 2008]] | country = Italy | type = parliamentary | ongoing = yes | party_colour = | party_name = no | previous_election = Italian general election, 2006 | previous_year = 2006 | next_election = | next_year = | seats_for_election = | election_date = [[13 April]] [[2008]] | image1 = | colour1 = | nominee1 = | leader1 = [[Silvio Berlusconi]] | party1 = Freedom People | popular_vote1 = | percentage1 = | image2 = | colour2 = | nominee2 = | leader2 = | party2 = | popular_vote2 = | percentage2 = | image3 = | colour3 = | nominee3 = | leader3 = | party3 = | popular_vote3 = | percentage3 = | image4 = | colour4 = | nominee4 = | leader4 = | party4 = | popular_vote4 = | percentage4 = | image5 = | colour5 = | nominee5 = | leader5 = | party5 = | popular_vote5 = | percentage5 = | image6 = | colour6 = | nominee6 = | leader6 = | party6 = | popular_vote6 = | percentage6 = | before_election = | before_colour = | after_election = | after_colour = }} —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zizi-EU (talk • contribs) 20:11, 9 February 2008

Done a little work on above. Seems for each party XXX need create a page Template:XXX/meta/shortname and place in it a single line of the short version of the party name. So in case above, need create Template:Freedom people/meta/shortname (why this bizzare and convoluted coding feature?) David Ruben ^Talk 02:22, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

• Just add | party_name = no to remove this feature. --Philip Stevens (talk) 06:12, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Discard the overly rigid party shortname stuff please -- or at least don't make it the only option

When the Opposition is composed of multiple parties with multiple leaders (sometimes an informal "coalition"), this template is way too rigid to be useful. This template also doesn't work for three-way elections. The shortname stuff is especially annoying -- can you just let editors pipe it themselves? Having a shortname template just seems way too long-winded to make any sense. When I try to enter multiple parties for the Opposition, I get a big mess. If for example we want most election articles to use the same template (so we can make global adjustments as needed), then we need a way more flexible template. Furthermore, I think this template is just biting off too much -- it should call separate parliamentary, presidential, etc. templates rather than have it all coded into one template. John Riemann Soong (talk) 18:19, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Which elections are you looking at? --Philip Stevens (talk) 18:25, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

The elections for Singapore -- which may be a laugh, I know, but I don't see the point of having the template adopt a shortname to discard the bracket tags when the template caller still has to create extra templates himself! John Riemann Soong (talk) 14:30, 24 March 2008 (UTC)