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Broken bars

There's been some good work on the forthcoming local elections in different regions. However, if you go to, for example, 2021_Hartlepool_Borough_Council_election#Council_composition, you will see one of these bars to show the current composition of the council:

↓
4 8 6 4 1 1 4 3
C Lab IU SL VP FB Ind Vacant

We have previously agreed to never use these. They are fundamentally broken: they do not display properly on some screens in some situations. The arrow indicating halfway gets misplaced. The size of the subsections can go wrong because Wikipedia will never make the section smaller than the text within it. They mostly work on big screens, but most people read Wikipedia on smartphones.

So, can we go through and replace these? Bondegezou (talk) 09:37, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

I've replaced the Hartlepool graphic with a simple list. Happy to see some alternate graphic if someone has the time to do that.
Doktorbuk, I think you did the original graphic here? Great work on the article, but, sorry, these graphics are broken. Bondegezou (talk) 09:43, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
Yeah I have to admit I took those bars from another article, can't remember where or when but it's a tidy while ago. I quite like them when they're displayed properly. I know this is a cosmetic point but I quite like them over a simple table. Happy to discuss if there's a debate to be had, maybe the horseshoe diagram is better? doktorb wordsdeeds 09:54, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
I've gone through a good bunch of 2021 articles and replaced bars with simple lists. A few 2021 articles already have horseshoes. I think a simple list is accessible and clear to read, so I'd rather a list + horseshoe than horseshoe alone. A few articles have tables, sometimes with the previous result in one column and the state of play before the election in the next column; sometimes with the election result for the last few elections. Bondegezou (talk) 10:27, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
Is there a good example of a 2021 article with horseshoes? I've tried adding them to an article I'm working on but I can't get the page format to work the way I'd like. Ralbegen (talk) 14:24, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
@Ralbegen: 2021 Bristol City Council election and 2021 Plymouth City Council election are two examples of horseshoes. I've seen some other formatting too. One problem with horseshoes is picking what order to do the colours in. There was a recent discussion about this at a WikiProject, but I can't find it now! I think there can be problems with the horseshoe getting WP:SYNTHy if it implies something with how the colours are laid out. Bondegezou (talk) 10:13, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
Thank you! (Plymouth was my attempt at adding horseshoes! I couldn't figure out how to force them onto the right of the page, level with the table...). Horseshoe layout order is the same problem as composition bar order, so I think that moving on from a broken graphic to horseshoes moves on from that problem whilst keeping a neat visual indicator. I think there are sensible ways of laying them out without necessarily incurring synthesis (governing parties from largest to smallest from the left, opposition parties from largest to smallest from the right) but I don't want to hijack this thread with a disussion about that! Ralbegen (talk) 10:29, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
The other approach I've seen is to turn the horseshoe into a figure and then put it in a figure box. Bondegezou (talk) 10:42, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Warrenlm has been doing commendable work on 2021 Hyndburn Borough Council election, 2019 Hyndburn Borough Council election, 2018 Hyndburn Borough Council election etc. However, they have included the dreaded bar graphics on all these articles and are reluctant to remove them. Can we have some more input on what to do, here or at Talk:2021 Hyndburn Borough Council election? Thanks. Bondegezou (talk) 10:04, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm happy to be part of a consensus to replace these wherever they currently exist. I've added several of them to articles in the past myself but it's quite clear they're not working and there are better alternatives. Ralbegen (talk) 10:32, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Bedchamber Crisis article needs going over.

The infobox is in the wrong format. Further information is needed to raise it from stub level. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Glorious68 (talk • contribs) 20:26, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the politics of the United Kingdom's infobox

I have raised concern, see talk:politics of the United Kingdom as the infobox uses the American style of Government referring to the United Kingdom's legislative, executive and judicial branches. The UK does not have branches of Government, just the Government which are made up of Ministers of the Crown. Particularly with regards to the judiciary, it should not even be mentioned in the infobox as they are not like in the US a 'co-equal branch' they have little power due to Parliamentary Sovereignty. Parliament should still be mentioned but, in my opinion, not under the heading of 'legislative branch' as Parliament is not a branch of anything. It could come under the term, legislature. Government, Parliament and the judiciary are in the UK not branches of anything but different entities. Unlike in the US, where they all come under the term Government, being called, executive branch, the legislative branch and the judicial branch. Thanks DukeLondon (talk) 20:43, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I personally disagree and think the infobox is broadly fine as it is. The legislature-executive-judiciary distinction outdates the US and is generally attributable to Baron de Montesquieu. While we may call our largest executive body the in the UK the UK government, government can also mean, effectively, the entire public sector, which includes the legislature and the judiciary (this is how Montesquieu used it). And while the US might have a 'better' separation of powers than we do, the UK still has a separation of powers in a few ways. I hope that that makes sense! FollowTheTortoise (talk) 08:56, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
Thank you for responding. I understand and I accept that the distinction is very prevalent. I did not know who first made the distinction so thank you for that! DukeLondon (talk) 10:55, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
Hi. No problem! FollowTheTortoise (talk) 15:26, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
Apologies for the double comment, but looking at the infobox (I'm afraid that I was thinking of a different infobox when I first commented), I do think that it could do with a bit of work. Firstly, we should remove the "branch" suffix (so, for example, "legislature" instead of "legislative branch"), to make it a bit less Americanised. Secondly, we should put Her Majesty at the top of the box, outside of the three branches, as the monarchy really spans all three. Thirdly, we should do something to include more of the devolved legislatures, executives and judicaries, but perhaps without going right down into local government. Finally, I do also think that other parts could do with a rewording (for example, is it really necessary to clarify that the Prime Minister chairs the Cabinet?) I hope that that makes sense! FollowTheTortoise (talk) 15:35, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
Agreed! Yes, thank you for your suggestions. DukeLondon (talk) 16:16, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
I was just looking at the infobox and it seems that it needs a lot of work. On top of factual errors and omissions, I'm minded that Template:infobox political system it isn't suited to UK politics at all, as there isn't really an opportunity to add in the devolved executives, legislatures and judiciaries. Should we remove it and just stick with Template:Politics of the United Kingdom? Or create a new one? FollowTheTortoise (talk) 18:55, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Political party articles, notability, etc.

Hey all

Right, let's get the headers out and see how this goes.

Context

Over many years here, I've held one view quite closely and that is: not all political parties are notable enough for a Wikipedia article. Since the creation of the Register of Political Parties, it's become common for articles to be created on the basis of "if they're registered, they're notable", and that has not sat well with me. In the run-up to elections, and we've seen this in 2021, editors create articles for political parties before they've contested any elections or achieved something notable. We've seen Freedom Alliance (UK) deleted through AfD, which was right, and Alba Party retained, because the latter was created in the run up to the elections and has enough surrounding it to be clearly notable. Freedom have appeared from nowhere and the article only appeared for promotional/campaigning purposes. The same is true of the Northern Independence Party article, which should have been deleted having been re-created from a successful AfD and was subject to off-Wiki campaigning/canvassing.

We have, over the years, a run of successful AfDs for political parties. I don't accept the argument that people are missing out because they can't see a Wikipedia article about the Miss Great Britain Party, or the Friends Party, or whoever. If parties are hardly gaining any votes in elections, they're unlikely to get people rushing to Wikipedia for information. My view has always been summarised as: if you're a political party that needs to use Wikipedia as a blog/campaign site, that you've failed as a political party.

In the run-up to elections, editors want their political party to gain attention and support. Wikipedia is still used as a tool for minor parties wanting to promote themselves. This is why Northern Independence Party canvassed off-Wiki. This is why IP editors are attracted to the Brexit/Reform article.

I think we have seen the consequence of so many successful AfDs in the lack of an article for George Galloway's Workers Party, and how long it took for the Heritage Party to gain an article. I think the successful AfD for Freedom Alliance shows that the community can see that political parties have to do more than just existing and campaigning to gain an article.

Previous proposal

Many years ago - 2008 in fact - I drew up a proposal for political party article notability rules. These were not in place to override GNG. They were proposed to work alongside GNG. The proposal had seven "clauses":

  1. . The Electoral Clause: political parties which have, or have had, representation in national or regional assemblies should be regarded as notable.
  2. . The Lineage Clause: a party which is the de jure/de facto precursor/successor to a party that meets the Electoral Clause is notable.
  3. . The Campaign Clause: a party that has an indisputable, clear, and certain importance in a state's political, cultural or social history, is regarded as notable. This notability must be based upon an external, verifiable, published, reliable source which prove the party's importance.
  4. . The Person Clause: a party which is launched or helped launch by a person who meets the Wikipedia notability criteria for people, should be given a place within that person's article until such time as it satisfies other clauses in its own right (see David Kuerten's Heritage Party)
  5. . The Registration Clause: appearing on a nation's register of political parties or equivalent is not enough to claim notability.
  6. . The Failure Clause: not being successful in any election does not necessarily mean the party is not notable. See Official Monster Raving Loony Party
  7. . The Alliance Clause: party lists/groups for PR elections should not necessarily have stand-alone articles.

Possible proposal

The above is over 10 years old. Wikipedia has changed since. And Wikipedian attitudes towards bureaucracy has changed. I accept that we might not be able to agree on a policy with seven complex, over-lapping clauses.

I would still like to focus on the Electoral, Lineage, Campaign, and Registration clauses. These tie-in with general notability guidelines, and should not be too contentious.

Discussion

I know that some editors and I will never agree on this matter. I want to find some kind of agreement because, if nothing else, I've been on this ride since proposing the above clauses back when I was very, very younger. To keep going on about this, and without solution, might seem like I've wasted my life. But that's Wikipedia for you! doktorb wordsdeeds 08:56, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Doktorbuk, for your detailed write-up. I like the idea of this, but I don't think it deals clearly with the type of party that most often comes up in AfDs, that is to say parties with little or no elected representation. These sorts of parties would obviously fail point one, and point two isn't normally relevant. This brings us to point three: A party that has an indisputable, clear, and certain importance in a state's political, cultural or social history, is regarded as notable. I can't tell whether this is just a long way of asking "does it pass WP:GNG?", or a different metric altogether. If it's the latter, then it seems like a very high bar to jump - you're saying that a party has to be nationally significant in some way to be notable? There are plenty of local residents' associations (for example), that wouldn't be considered to have an indisputable, clear, and certain importance in a state's political, cultural or social history, but are nevertheless seen as notable due to other factors. I suppose point 6 acts as somewhat of a disclaimer to this (Not being successful in any election does not necessarily mean the party is not notable), but it still doesn't give a clear idea of what exactly a party needs to have in terms of local representation, longevity, source coverage, etc, in order to be notable.
I've adapted your principles into my own version, which I hope help to address my concerns above. They are somewhat more lenient than your ones above, but I would be interested to hear your (and others' opinions) about them.
  1. Parties that have, or have had, any representation in national or regional assemblies are regarded as notable.
  2. Parties that have, or have had, significant representation at a local level are regarded as notable. This means that they have had multiple representatives elected in two or more elections (either simultaneous elections to different bodies, or seperate elections to the same body).
  3. A party which is the de jure or de facto precursor or successor to a party that meets the first two criteria is regarded as notable.
  4. Parties that don't meet the first two criteria are regarded as notable if multiple reliable and independent sources show that they are important for reasons other than simply being a political party, or contesting an election.
These points are, of course, in addition to the GNG, and I would echo the point you made that parties on the electoral register aren't automatically notability by virtue of being there. PinkPanda272 (talk/contribs) 10:00, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies)

Evening all

I'd like to amend Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies) so it also encompasses article titles which are suffixed by "(Scottish Parliament constituency)" and "(Senedd Cymru constituency)". I'm fairly certain that we'll have little opposition to this but I am aware changes must be discussed and considered beforehand so here we are. doktorb wordsdeeds 21:37, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Assistance request on Cash for curtains disputed allegations

Hello, I would appreciate some assistance on Cash for curtains disputed allegations. It is appearing difficult to reach consensus around a neutral point of view. Any intervention from more experienced Wikipedians would be much appreciated. RoanokeVirginia (talk) 20:29, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

List of living former MPs

I've recently been researching the oldest living former MPs, and User:Andrew Gray has helpfully replied to me at Talk:Records of members of parliament of the United Kingdom#Longest-lived MP with something along the lines of what I was going to propose here: a Wiki list article of every living former MP. Andrew makes it 1074 former MPs who are currently living - might this be too much for one page? A Wikidata list he links to here has them listed.

I originally began researching this when Ronald Atkins died, and Records of members of parliament of the United Kingdom hadn't been updated with the new record holder for the oldest living former MP. Someone had added the fact to the article for Patrick Duffy - unsourced, but after I had manually checked the last House of Commons list of living former MPs (and then the Lords, who they left off the list), Duffy clearly was the new record holder. I've alerted the local press to the story, and the Doncaster Free Press has now covered it (so that link is now added as a reference to verify the claim). I believe the reporter is going to interview Sir Patrick. I expanded his article substantially after learning of his feat, as it seemed to be quite sparse before. I also researched a list of every living former MP over 89. As time goes on, the Wikidata list should help us keep track of who the oldest living former MPs are, but I think it deserves a Wikipedia list article of its own. Any thoughts? --TrottieTrue (talk) 22:02, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I think that it sounds like an excellent idea! FollowTheTortoise (talk) 00:13, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
I'm glad you agree! I'm happy to contribute to this project, as it would be a pretty big task I imagine, which may be best shared out.. And others are more than welcome to use my list from that Talk page as a starting point. It seems that there's only a few dozen current MPs with no DOB data on Wikipedia. Some older ones have only got a year of birth. Who's Who is pretty useful for this kind of thing. Having a fuller list would enable us to find out other facts, like the last living MP from such and such party (I think John Nott is the last living National Liberal MP). --TrottieTrue (talk) 00:56, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
Interesting idea. I guess 1074 is too big for a sortable table? In which case it might be best to split by birth decade, and then in each decade table make sortable on surname, birthdate, party (hmm, complicated for those who change), constituency, country (E/W/S/NI), M/F. With column for "notes" where changes of party or name can be shown. PamD 06:48, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
Not sure, but List of members of the House of Lords has all 801 members. @Andrew Gray: can you help with this? --TrottieTrue (talk) 03:27, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
  • @PamD and TrottieTrue: The Lords list is naturally divided by functional groups (sitting Lords, Bishops, non-sitting members) and we don't have those for MPs. I think a single list might be manageable; List of current members of the British Privy Council has about 700 members and uses a single list with some clever coding to add subheadings while keeping it sortable.
I've done a bit of poking around and this list has I think a complete list as of today - 1075 names, grouped by decade of birth as you suggest. I've also added the first and last dates in Parliament - first day is date of election, last day is date of dissolution, resigning, etc. This might be a practical way of grouping if not by age - eg "people who started their careers in the 1966 Parliament" or "people who ended their careers in the 1997 Parliament". Will work something up tomorrow with seats + parties. Andrew Gray (talk) 23:34, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
Sounds good, but your "this list" link takes me to a Wikidata search rather than anything I can understand. The List of current members of the British Privy Council is a supposedly sortable table but the dates sort by the text of the date (just try it), and the names by first name - so it hasn't used the sophistications available to make a table sort properly, which is a shame. If creating a big sortable table it makes sense to make it sort by true date and by surname/defaultsort. I'm not sure the initials "A" etc are a great help: once you sort the table on any field they disappear. That table might as well be a flat list, really, rather than a sortable table, for all the useful sorting you can do. Well, you can sort on the "reason" column, but that seems unlikely to be useful. PamD 23:54, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
To make a name sortable you need something like {{sort|Wainwright, Alfred|[[Alfred Wainwright]]}}. To fix the date there's something like data-sort-type=date but when I tried adding that about half the table sorted properly by date and then the lower part of the table didn't work: I don't really understand this complex table. But it must be doable. Good luck. PamD 00:12, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
Pam, if you press the "play" button to execute the search, you'll see a sortable table (you may well know that already, but I mention it just in case you don't). I think Andrew was merely pointing out his current data on the subject, which could form the basis of a Wikipedia list article. I think grouping a list article by chronological tables along the lines of "people who started their careers in the 1966 Parliament" could work. I was thinking of "MPs first elected at the 1966 election" etc, but that then doesn't account for MPs who were first elected at by-elections (and in fact, the oldest living former MP, Sir Patrick Duffy, was indeed first elected at a by-election in 1963). However, he was elected during the 1959 Parliament, which could be a solution. Another fact at Records of members of parliament of the United Kingdom which will require updating in future is that of the earliest elected MP still living. Grouping living former MPs by the Parliament in which they were elected would help to maintain information on the current holder of that record. As things stand, when Robert Lindsay, 29th Earl of Crawford (currently the earliest elected MP still living) dies, there will be two living former MPs who were elected in 1959. They could both be cited as the earliest elected living former MPs, unless we want to be really specific and find out which one had their declaration first (if that information even exists now). I look forward to seeing what Andrew comes up with, in the hope we might work towards a Wiki article list. --TrottieTrue (talk) 00:47, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
@TrottieTrue: Trying to figure out when someone first "becomes" an MP rapidly leads to madness (I think there are about six different answers and they're all justifiable in some way) - I think it's easiest to use day of election here rather than start looking at declaration, taking the seat, etc. (I think from memory this is what the majority of MP articles use). For what it's worth, the official seniority calculation for Father of the House uses the order of taking the oath as a tie-breaker, so if you wanted you could try and work that out. Andrew Gray (talk) 10:44, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
@Andrew Gray: Yes, personally I think that if Lindsay died first, it would be acceptable to list both of the MPs first elected in 1959 as the earliest elected former MPs still living: there are two from that election, John Morris and Stratton Mills. I was aware of the way that the Father of the House is calculated, and looked into when those MPs were sworn in, but I can't actually find a record of Morris taking the oath. However, in a few years (based on the oldest dying first), there's a chance that the earliest elected living former MPs will be a large group from the 1964 election. Rather than listing a dozen or so as holding the title, some users may prefer to fine-tune it by choosing the one sworn in to the HOC first. There's only three former MPs elected at by-elections between 1959 and 1964, and then 11 on 15 October 1964. When the time comes, I wouldn't be too opposed to Records of members of parliament of the United Kingdom simply listing all 11, if there is no one living who was first elected prior to that date. In any case, they may not have all been declared as elected on 15 October 1964, given overnight counts announcing results the next day etc. And just because someone is sworn in first, it doesn't mean they were elected first. It isn't an honorific title like Father of the House. So I think my preference would be to list all survivors first elected in 1964, if none are alive from previous elections, and there are multiple ex-MPs from the same election. It just so happens that Robert Lindsay is the clear record holder at the moment, with no-one else alive from the 1955 election. I wonder who the last survivor elected at the 1951 election was. Patrick Duffy is quite possibly the only surviving candidate from the 1950 election, but without details of every unelected candidate from that election, that can't realistically be verified. Jeremy Hutchinson, Baron Hutchinson of Lullington, who died in 2017, is a strong contender for being the last living candidate from the 1945 election. --TrottieTrue (talk) 17:29, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Apologies @PamD: - as TT says, hit the blue button and wait ten-twenty seconds and it'll generate the list. I should have remembered to say, sorry!
Some test grouping counts - by decade of birth (8 groups, the largest ~350); by last Parliament (15 groups, the largest ~200); by first Parliament (17 groups, the largest ~200). I think any of these would be a natural subdivision for a list, though going by last Parliament is probably the easiest one to maintain - by definition newly added people will go on the bottom of the list. Andrew Gray (talk) 10:44, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
@Andrew Gray: Thanks - the blue button did the trick! Impressive. I see the dates sort properly, though the names sort badly (by forename) - presumably it would be possible to use the given-name and family-name fields from Wikidata to generate a sortable version of the name, which would almost always be the right DEFAULTSORT, and use the enwiki link field to create the link. PamD 12:05, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
@PamD: Yes, it should be possible to do that - it is a little bit tricky because of multiple forenames/surnames for some people - Wikidata doesn't always know what order to put them in - but I could certainly generate all the "straightforward" ones and leave the others for manual addition. I think that would only leave us about a hundred to sort by hand.
This report is a first stab at generating a list of members with corresponding seats + parties. It looks like about 80% sat for just one seat, though a couple had as many as four (mostly due to boundary shifts). 90% had just one party affiliation, and that is with periods of the whip suspended counted as an affiliation of "independent", so the real number is likely higher.
The big, big caveat with this last list is that while I'm happy with the seat data, the party data is not yet fully validated. We have imported data for this period from WP, mainly based on lists of MPs returned at each election, but I have not yet gone through it in detail to winnow out all the fine nuances of mid-term party changes etc, grouping of smaller parties like National Liberals into large ones, etc. I'll try and do a bit more validation on these ASAP, it's been on the to-do list for a while. But as a basis for a first draft of a list, I think it's looking pretty promising - it will not take me long to transform a report like this into a properly-formatted table. Andrew Gray (talk) 14:17, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
Well done. I wonder how you're going to handle MPs who (a) represented more than one seat over time (hm, probably more common in the past but I'm sure there are plenty, especially where constituencies have been reaarranged over time so that they may have represented mostly the same voters but under a different constituency name), and (b) changed parties? Have fun. PamD 14:56, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
Andrew Gray, great work, thank you. It sounds encouraging - I had a feeling, with my limited IT knowledge, that generating these tables wouldn't be too hard once the data was available, and certainly easier than creating it from scratch manually. TrottieTrue (talk) 17:29, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
Okay, here is a proof of concept (it's limited to MPs who started since 1997, to make it a bit more manageable). It correctly sorts on first/last day. It has a little trouble sorting on birthdate given that a handful are just "year"; I've forced it to treat these all as 1 Jan. Names are sortable for the "easy" ones, but the others would need manually fixed. Constituencies and parties are given in single fields, which obviously limits the utility for sorting for the 20% with more than one, and annoyingly it is not possible to make sure they're in the right order. However, it definitely looks like we're getting somewhere in terms of spinning up a table!
In principle I could replace the party and constituency sections with a more sophisticated set of lines, one per "period of office", like this example for Galloway (six distinct party-seat combinations!) - I've mocked it up in the second table with three examples. (I haven't done it for the full table as I would need to write some code to generate it at scale). However, if you sort it rapidly starts looking a bit weird. Hmm. Not sure what the best approach here would be. Andrew Gray (talk) 21:48, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
Looks good, Andrew. It could do with some colour, but MPs who stood under different parties might make that difficult. David Boothroyd told me that he has exact birthdates for all bar five MPs in the post-war era (and those are deceased), so it shouldn't be too hard to fill in the gaps, although he might have got them from primary sources (ie. birth certificates). The HOC did publish a list of MPs since 1979 in 2018, which includes birth dates... alas not for the ones you only have a year for! However, Luke Graham has a month of birth, and Fiona Onasanya has an exact date on her article. I'll have a look at the data you're missing and see what can be filled in. From the rest of your list, Gillian Keegan, Katherine Fletcher, Anna McMorrin, Sarah Olney, Daisy Cooper, Fay Jones, Tom Hunt and Amy Callaghan already have exact DOBs. I've added the full DOBs for Lia Nici, James Wild, Munira Wilson, Antony Higginbotham, Anthony Mangnall and Nicola Richards.
The 'fancy table demo' looks fine. It probably doesn't need to note the number of days a politician was in each party. As you say though, sorting it looks a bit odd as you get multiple entries for each person who sat for several parties. Can multiple constituencies not be shown on one line for an MP? The way you've done it in the first table would probably be fine. As long as all the constituencies had Wikilinks. Just found this interesting example for comparison: List of United Kingdom MPs who died in the 2010s. Good to see there's a 2020s version! There's also List of United Kingdom MPs by seniority (2019–present).--TrottieTrue (talk) 01:45, 19 March 2021 (UTC)


That's an interesting one: I think it should be possible to do something like that. Here's a couple of options - first option groups party & seat, second decouples them, third uses the elections approach from the deaths list rather than giving dates.

Name Born First day in Parliament Last day in Parliament Representing
Rosemary McKenna 8 May 1941 1 May 1997 12 Apr 2010 Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Labour, 1997-2005)

Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Labour, 2005-2010)

Kelvin Hopkins 22 Aug 1941 1 May 1997 6 Nov 2019 Luton North (Labour, 1997-2017)

Luton North (independent, 2017-2019)

Angela Watkinson 18 Nov 1941 7 Jun 2001 3 May 2017 Upminster (Conservative, 2001-2010)

Hornchurch and Upminster (Conservative, 2010-2017)


Name Born First day in Parliament Last day in Parliament Party Constituency
Rosemary McKenna 8 May 1941 1 May 1997 12 Apr 2010 Labour Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (1997-2005)

Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (2005-2010)

Kelvin Hopkins 22 Aug 1941 1 May 1997 6 Nov 2019 Labour (1997-2017)

independent (2017-2019)

Luton North
Angela Watkinson 18 Nov 1941 7 Jun 2001 3 May 2017 Conservative Upminster (2001-2010)

Hornchurch and Upminster (2010-2017)


Name Born First day in Parliament Last day in Parliament Party Constituency Elections won
Rosemary McKenna 8 May 1941 1 May 1997 12 Apr 2010 Labour Cumbernauld and Kilsyth

Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East

1997, 2001, 2005
Kelvin Hopkins 22 Aug 1941 1 May 1997 6 Nov 2019 Labour

independent

Luton North 1997, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2017
Angela Watkinson 18 Nov 1941 7 Jun 2001 3 May 2017 Conservative Upminster

Hornchurch and Upminster

2001, 2005, 2010, 2015

The columns for party & seat are notionally sortable, but in practice will only ever sort by whatever the first entry in the field is. I've done colour here by "most significant" party, but we could also do it by "party at time of leaving". I suspect whatever approach we use here will be a bit imperfect. The other approach to add colour would be to ditch the party colour tags and add thumbnail headshots instead. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:41, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Andrew. I suppose one problem is how different parties are represented. Actually, List of LGBT politicians in the United Kingdom seems to do it quite well - see Nikki Sinclaire or Nick Boles in the table (although it isn't comprehensive, with Simon Hughes not showing his previous affiliation, for example). That list has headshots in addition to party colours, so no reason we can't have both. Sorting the LGBT politicians list by party means you end up with Nick Boles in there twice, but there's no easy way around it. At least that means someone can sort that list by Independents, should they wish to. It's similar with constituencies: Tom Driberg sat for two seats, so both Maldon and Barking are in separate rows. All that said, I suppose the main things people would want to know are: who the oldest or youngest living former MPs are, and then narrowing that down by party. For the Records of MPs Wiki article, we also need to know who the earliest elected living former MPs are. Phew! I prefer your second table of the ones you've posted. I don't really think "elections won" is particularly vital... and by-election winners complicate it further. Good luck.--TrottieTrue (talk) 20:00, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Another useful couple of columns might be male/female and England /Scotland / Wales /NI? (Ah, I wonder whether any MPs represented seats in >1 country?) PamD 23:53, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
I agree about male/female (or just a heading called 'Gender', as that can be a minefield). Well, off the top of my head, Roy Jenkins represented seats in England and Scotland (Birmingham Stechford and Glasgow Hillhead), while Enoch Powell represented seats in England and Northern Ireland (Wolverhampton South West and South Down). I personally wouldn't see the need to include that on the table, but it might be an interesting section to add to Records of members of parliament of the United Kingdom. Any thoughts on that? I'd add it myself if I had a list. Just looking at "MPs who have sat for three or more different constituencies" on that page, and there's also Michael Ancram, Sir Winston Churchill, George Galloway, William Ewart Gladstone, Edward Hemmerde, Walter Long (including Dublin, before Irish independence), Ramsay MacDonald (three of the four nations), Frank Soskice, John Strachey and Sir Robert Peel (including the modern ROI again). I wonder who else there might be. Michael Foot sat for seats in England (Plymouth Devonport) and Wales (Blaenau Gwent). So no-one has done all four nations. MacDonald is probably the only MP sit sit for three of the four nations.--TrottieTrue (talk) 01:14, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

A quick update: I've almost finished checking the party data and should be ready to generate the draft table in the next couple of days. List of LGBT politicians in the United Kingdom is a pretty good model, so we could do something like this -

Image Name Born Gender Party Constituency Country First day in Parliament Last day in Parliament
[img] Rosemary McKenna 8 May 1941 Female Labour Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (1997-2005); Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (2005-2010) Scotland 1 May 1997 12 Apr 2010
[img] Kelvin Hopkins 22 Aug 1941 Male Labour (1997-2017) Luton North England 1 May 1997 6 Nov 2019
Independent (2017-2019)
[img] Angela Watkinson 18 Nov 1941 Female Conservative Upminster (2001-2010); Hornchurch and Upminster (2010-2017) England 7 Jun 2001 3 May 2017

So we have country, gender and image added. Constituency is in a single cell; party is split to allow for colours which means that people will get split across multiple lines if resorted. We could avoid this by making party (and seat?) unsortable columns - I guess it depends on how you see people using it. I've added notes to party and seat with dates unless they were the same for the full career. Do we want a "notes" field as well (eg to add things like Lords membership, note breaks in service, etc?) Andrew Gray (talk) 23:44, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, Andrew - good work. The LGBT list has constituencies in separate rows, but I guess a listing of living former MPs doesn't necessarily need that. Is there any way you can generate information on MPs who have sat for more than one of the UK nations, or would it need to be manually checked? In this instance, 'Country' would be useful, especially with the UK's constitutional future up for discussion. And I suppose some might be interested to know the oldest living former Welsh, English, Scottish, NI MPs. I don't think there's any harm in having ex-MPs like Kelvin Hopkins appear twice when the list is sorted by party. Yes - I think a "Notes" field is a good idea, to add things like Lords membership.--TrottieTrue (talk) 18:27, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
We don't quite have the country data set for all constituencies (I'd set it up for current but not historic ones; report) so I'll have to do a little backfilling, but for the moment it looks like there are six living ex-MPs who have represented two countries - four England/Scotland, two England/Wales. (There is a seventh sitting MP who's also represented England/Wales).
For constituencies, I think it's fine to have them on a single row as alphabetical sorting here wouldn't really be very useful anyway - if you want to know who sat for Birmingham seats, you'd probably search the list for Birmingham rather than trying to sort them together. Andrew Gray (talk) 23:38, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
I think including "MPs who have sat for multiple nations of the United Kingdom" on the list of MPs records article might be a good addition. Maybe I should set up a discussion on the talk page there. As with other facts on that page, it would probably need to be limited to the post-Reform Act era or similar.
I agree about sorting constituencies, although bear in mind that not all Birmingham seats include 'Birmingham' in their name. Sutton Coldfield being one I can think of, but it probably isn't that important for the purposes of the list.--TrottieTrue (talk) 00:06, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
Good work!--TrottieTrue (talk) 22:48, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
@TrottieTrue and PamD: Okay - all the tinkering sorted. I have generated a final table, done some manual cleanup, and put a copy here. 1076 entries, complete as of Wednesday's resignation in Airdrie. It may still need a bit of work around the party lists depending on exactly how you want it to display (eg you may want to omit very short periods as an independent), and the notes column may need some human oversight (it's currently just a quick note of other roles), but the bones are all there, the columns sort as expected, and I think all the party colours are correct. Happy for you to put it into mainspace whenever you're happy with the results! Andrew Gray (talk) 22:47, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Andrew, well done, at first glance it looks fine, although I am unable to sort it. Also, I assume the gender will be capitalised, and the DOB will be written as 28 Mar 2021 rather than, say 28-3-2021? Default sort order is, I assume, the date they first entered Parliament.—TrottieTrue (talk) 00:24, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
{[ping|TrottieTrue}} Ah - good catch. It had got ISO-formatted somewhere along the line - I think I've switched all three date columns now to the full format. It does sort (with the exception of about 50 names don't yet have sort-keys set), but it can take a few moments for the browser to properly recognise this - I guess it is pushing the limits of a sortable table a bit! Correct on date; I felt this was a natural default to work with, given it was more or less arbitrary which approach we used. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:12, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
Looks good, but why are some of the photos not the same ones used in the articles themselves? Ie. John Morris has him in his robes, rather than the House of Lords headshot. If you wanted to make the list less cumbersome, you could split it into tables by the Parliament in which they entered the House of Commons.--TrottieTrue (talk) 18:37, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
I think it's probably OK as is, but if you'd prefer to split it, please do! The problem with splitting, I suspect, is that it effectively forces one preferred sorting method - once it's broken up by Parliament, you can't easily sort to find the oldest, youngest, etc. For images, I pulled them from Wikidata, which isn't always in sync with the Wikipedia image - I don't think it's possible for me to automatically make sure it's the same as in the enwiki infobox without manually checking each time, sorry. It looks like WD has been fixed up with the new Commons headshots, but not all of the Lords ones. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:06, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Ah yes, I see what you mean about splitting the list. Maybe someone can replace the thumbnails to match the official headshots, where the photos are different?--TrottieTrue (talk) 22:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
@TrottieTrue: I've done a quick pass on WD to update to new headshots for anyone who sat in the 2017/2019 Parliaments, or is a former MP currently in the Lords. (Can't guarantee they're all the same as WP, but they're all modern shots where available). Interesting to see who we don't have new photos for at all. I'll regenerate the table tomorrow - are there any other changes you'd suggest before I do? Andrew Gray (talk) 21:37, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
@Andrew Gray: Great, thanks. I think as long as they’re headshots it will look fine. Then adding images for others on the list will be a task for editors to look at. Patrick Duffy certainly needs one. The only other thing I’ve noticed is that the ‘Notes’ doesn’t factor in retired Lords. See the entry for Shirley Williams. ‘Former’ added to ‘member of the House of Lords’ would be more appropriate. Is it too much to add senior cabinet roles to ‘Notes’? Maybe just the four great offices of state and party leaders? ‘See also’ can have a link to the list of former cabinet members still living.—TrottieTrue (talk) 22:25, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
I had a quick poke at doing dates for the notes and it looks like it gets quite complicated to accurately identify current vs former - it's doable, it just becomes a lot of heavy lifting - so maybe a generic note for "was X at some point" is the way to go for now.
Cabinet members, hmmm. I think I could definitely do the big roles, not sure about all Cabinet posts (that becomes a moving target the further back we go). Shadow cabinet posts are incomplete. Will have to spend a bit of time investigating that one. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:57, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
I suppose the retired Lords could be added to the Notes manually by looking at the HoL list article. I think just ‘former’ is enough, just so it’s clear Williams et al are no longer in the Lords. Re: cabinet members, I would advocate for just the main posts (such as the four great offices: PM, Chancellor, Foreign Sec and Home Sec). I’m not sure there’s any need to note equivalent shadow cabinet roles, but former party leaders are worth mentioning. Not that I want to overburden you, but a sortable article list of current MPs which included ages would be good too, I think. The main obstacle at the moment there is that a number don’t have DOBs here. I have requested the Times book at my local library as well as the resource request section here.—TrottieTrue (talk) 23:31, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
  • @TrottieTrue: Apologies - I think this one dropped off my radar a bit over the holidays! Going to be a bit busy over the next couple of days but will see what I can do for early next week. I think the outstanding point was trying to flesh out the "notes" section with something about senior roles and dates for the various other positions (MSP, Lords, etc). Looking back over my notes, not quite sure if I'll be able to do all of those but at the very least I hope I should be able to set up "current" vs "former" for Lords. If it proves impractical then I guess there's nothing stopping us generating the basic entries and then sprucing them up by hand, if needed.
Otherwise, I think it's basically ready to go into a list article, but it'll need the surrounding material. Do you want to draft an introduction, notes, etc? Then we can bolt the two together and be ready to go. Andrew Gray (talk) 21:29, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @Andrew Gray: Good to hear from you. No worries. I agree that the main thing is to get the list up, and then we can add things like Notes if necessary. Yes, I think the key things for Notes to mention is whether they were in a member of another regional Parliament, in the Lords, or had a senior Cabinet position (the four 'great offices of state' is enough, I feel). Party leaders should have that fact mentioned too. I suppose the introduction could just have a simple statement like:

"The following is a list of living former Members of Parliament (MPs) of the United Kingdom." The rest is self-evident, surely? Although nothing to stop others editing it to add more in future. If you have any examples of similar pages with longer introductions, which I could emulate, then let me know.--TrottieTrue (talk) 00:53, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Just commenting here to stop it slipping off the main page. Hope to hear more soon. TrottieTrue (talk) 18:01, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

@TrottieTrue: Sorry for the length of time this has taken. I had to give up trying to get a more detailed version of the notes fields generated, so it's more or less as before - if you want to add anything else to the notes field feel free, but personally I'm happy with leaving it as is. There is a detailed List of living former members of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom; as that covers the cabinet posts, we may not need to replicate it here.
I don't think I'll have any time to produce additional versions of this so as far as I'm concerned, it's ready to go out to mainspace, but have a look and let me know what you think. Feel free to tinker with it and add anything you think is missing, and I'll move it out in the next few days. Andrew Gray (talk) 23:38, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
@Andrew Gray: Pleased to hear from you, I was wondering about this. It's true that there is that list of living former Cabinet members, and this list doesn't necessarily need an abundance of information. I've added the key roles to the Notes column, and 'former' to those which are no longer held by the person. Also, why is George Osborne in there twice? I can't see any obvious reason why he should be. I corrected the formatting for Ynys Môn - the accent on the 'o' seems to have come out wrongly. Same for other Welsh names, possibly it's any symbols which have this problem. I would suggest capitalising the Gender column fields (Male, Female etc). I'm wondering if the other columns need Wikilinks adding - I would suggest yes, as in the List of LGBT politicians in the United Kingdom. If there isn't an easy way to add those, don't worry, as others can add the links later. It looks fine otherwise, thank you.--TrottieTrue (talk) 03:55, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
@TrottieTrue: Thanks for the notes. I think we've got the immediate bugs fixed - Osborne (and Cameron) had multiple lines because of multiple pictures (could have sworn I'd checked for that before). I've updated the totals accordingly. Special characters - I caught a glitch in Sinn Féin before uploading, and have fixed Öpik. I can't spot any others just now. Gender capped.
For links in the other columns, I initially decided against as I didn't want to overlink. I can see the arguments for linking constituencies but at this point I think either they'd have to be added by hand or I'd have to regenerate the whole thing, so I'll leave off for now! Andrew Gray (talk) 09:50, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
@Andrew Gray: Glad you’ve fixed those bugs and thanks for amending the other things. I was trying to think of any other ex MPs with symbols in their names! None have been called Zöe, I suppose?! The intro is really good, much better than what I could have come up with. Party leaders are important to me so I added those to Notes, but it doesn’t necessarily need mentioning in the intro. Shouldn’t be too hard to add Wikilinks. Maybe other editors have views, but I think in a table like this, everything should be Wikilinked. Find and Replace in the Wiki Visual Editor doesn’t seem to include table text, so the best way to get a lot linked might be on the Wikipedia iOS app or copying the text into Notepad etc to do F and R. That would work for party and notes. Constituency would require some manual checking to be complete. So I hope you don’t mind if those links are added. Good work, thank you. Let me know when it’s published.—TrottieTrue (talk) 12:26, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • @TrottieTrue: (and also @PamD and FollowTheTortoise: who commented earlier) - this is now live! A mere six weeks after we first discussed it... List of living former United Kingdom MPs. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:10, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
    Hurrah! Congratulations and well done for putting it together. ~~~~ FollowTheTortoise (talk) 19:15, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
    Thank you, Andrew. Much appreciated. @PamD and FollowTheTortoise: Can you please have a look at the talk page, as User:FDW777 is already threatening to get the article or its Dates of birth column deleted. See also the ANI incident I've raised. If we need to add a reference to each and every DOB used in that article, so be it, but we should at least be given the chance before a vindictive editor has it removed completely. I can see that the original MPs' articles might need references for DOBs, but I don't think it's necessary for the table itself.--TrottieTrue (talk) 21:14, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
    OK, a brief update: the article now has only years of birth, which I feel lessens its value. I've started adding referenced DOBs, and I'd be grateful if others could help complete this task. I've also started Wikilinking the constituencies. Perhaps at the Talk page we can debate whether parties and other roles need linking? I'm afraid FDW777's initial response to the article rather provoked me into the ANI incident report, which has now been closed. Worth also checking whether the articles themselves have referenced DOBs.--TrottieTrue (talk) 01:18, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
    At present the list does not work - sorting the current version (of 02:59, 5 May 2021) on date sorts a few into order but then leaves the year-only entries in random sequence. Andrew's first mainspace version (19:58, 4 May 2021), with full dates unreferenced, sorted OK by date with the quirk that it seemed to take two clicks to restore from latest-first to earliest-first. The years-only version of (22:20, 4 May 2021) sorts OK, with the same double-click needed, but of course lacks the precision, so won't necessarily show who the oldest member is, if they share a birth year.
I quite agree that every birth date in any article needs a source, especially a BLP, but I'm surprised that it's considered necessary to provide sources within a table when there is a link to the article on the person, as a reliably sourced birth date is not contentious. The references make the table look cluttered, presumably slow down its processing, and seem to actually wreck the sorting order. If they are needed, perhaps they should be in the "Notes" field, to preserve the sorting order. PamD 11:33, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Covid inquiry

RE the PM's recent announcement: I have just moved Proposed COVID-19 inquiry in the United Kingdom from draft to mainspace. If anyone on this project could give this a read through, make some copyedits if needed, and make sure everything is accurate then that would be very much appreciated ☺️ –Bangalamania (talk) 13:07, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Good luck everybody

This weekend is one of this project's biggest ever challenges.

  1. . London Mayor
  2. . London Assembly
  3. . District councils
  4. . County councils
  5. . Met Mayors
  6. . Scottish Parliament
  7. . Senedd
  8. . Hartlepool by-election
  9. . Countless local by-elections and assorted miscellany

We're going to have to edit a lot of results, across hundreds of pages, and deal with everybody from enthusiastic newbies to biased IP editors, and everyone in-between. Don't rush, or panic, or lose focus. And don't turn editing results pages into a second job. If the media rely on us to give them results boxes for screengrabbing, that's on them, not on us. Be good and safe and calm, and we should get through this. Virtual pints (or your drink of choice) next week in thanks.

doktorb wordsdeeds 06:07, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi Doktorbuk, was wondering if there is anything that really needs doing now with this? I'm happy to lend a hand. DansterTheManster (talk) 19:16, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
Hi DanserTheManster. Only just saw your response. If you look at my contributions, you can see there are Scottish Parliament results to fill in. Council websites should have the regional votes per constituency (the BBC does not). So that's one thing. Council elections don't need full results, really, just a link to the BBC and one local newspaper should be enough, so there are enough red links at 2021 United Kingdom local elections for you to busy yourself if you prefer those. If it starts to feel like a second job, stop. I learned to only do editing in little bursts recently, but whatever takes your fancy would be a great help. doktorb wordsdeeds 04:59, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
On the whole, though, congrats to everyone. We got through the week and did a good job. (But another by-election tonight.) Bondegezou (talk) 08:24, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Local council elections - party leaders

User @Sparkle1: has removed party leaders from, specifically, all Leeds Council election articles. Their edit summary is "standard practice is not to include this unneeded, unnecessary, unwanted, unhelpful information". I can't find at first hand any discussion about removing this information, and I'm concerned by the thesaurus of negativity used to justify the edits. Can we just have a discussion to confirm if these edits are right and their reasons are correct? doktorb wordsdeeds 10:43, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

I support Sparkle1's edits, and I support Doktorbuk's desire to have a discussion about them here. On the former, I think the reality is that voters in English council elections are not focused on council party leaders, so it is appropriate to omit such information from the infoboxes, and I always favour more compact infoboxes. (I'm politically engaged, I could tell you the rough breakdown of councillors by party on my local council, but I couldn't tell you any of the party leaders.) The information does, however, warrant inclusion in the article (but, of course, should be cited). Bondegezou (talk) 11:58, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
Maybe there are a small number of instances where naming the political group leaders is justified. Leeds Council seems to have a fairly even spread of representation, not dominated by one political group. However, I'd happily see the information removed from the Infobox and, if it is notable, added to the body of the article - for example a sourced discussion of the political issues running through the campaign. Listing (usually) non-notable people, unsourced, in the infobox surely contravenes WP:LISTPEOPLE. Sionk (talk) 19:59, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
I agree. If a party leader has done something notable in relation to their council, then a cited reference can be included in the narrative of the article. But there is no reason to clutter the infobox with a list of party leaders, who are generally non notable. You only need two members to appoint a group leader, and on some councils there can be a whole batch of groups. Putting all this information into the council’s infobox would be counter-productive, generating large amounts of maintenance work for data that doesn’t add value, and would almost certainly guarantee a large increase in the amount of inaccurate (out of date) information contained within WP, since few editors will be motivated to maintain it. MapReader (talk) 05:56, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Multi-Member Succession

With multi-member constituencies it can be hard to determine precisely who succeeds whom, except for when a member resigns mid-parliament. This leaves us with a problem when writing infoboxes as we either have to leave the |predecessor and |successor fields blank or to invent a convention -if the legislature itself doesn't have laid out- to decide which names to put in. The system I would recommend is to list the candidates in the order in which they were elected, cross out those continuing and then pair up the remainders.

To take the Mid & West Wales region for the Welsh Parliament as an example, the additional members for the last two elections were:

2016 2021
Neil Hamilton (UKIP) Eluned Morgan (Labour)
Joyce Watson (Labour) Joyce Watson (Labour)
Simon Thomas (Plaid Cymru) Cefin Campbell (Plaid Cymru)
Eluned Morgan (Labour) Jane Dodds (Liberal Democrat)

It happens that Joyce Watson got reeled off in second place both times, but Eluned Morgan has moved from fourth to first. By application of my system we would say that Watson and Morgan both continued in office while Campbell succeeded Hamilton and Dodds succeeded Thomas.

This applies to D'Hont (or block vote) style elections, when the party determines the order of their candidates within the list but then the votes - and the application of the formula - determines the order in which different parties' candidates are elected. With single transferable vote we should arrange them by who is declared elected first - and, if more than one member wins in the same round, then by who got the most votes in that round. With multi-member plurality voting (or "first, second and third past the post") we should order winning candidates by how many votes they individually received.

From what I have seen it looks as if this could be what most editors are doing already but I can't be entirely sure. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 12:18, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Now you describe it like that, it makes me wonder why we use succession boxes at all for multi-member constituencies. We don't use them for multi-member wards in local elections (though less local councillors have their own Wiki article, of course). BTW Jane Dodds is a Lib Dem, unless something major has happened in the Welsh Liberal Democrats in the last 24 hours  ;) Sionk (talk) 13:19, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
I concur with Sionk. Instead of trying to squeeze multimember contexts into the field, let's just not use that field. Bondegezou (talk) 13:34, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

We need to indicate their membership somehow, otherwise we imply that multi-member offices are inherently less noteworthy than single-member ones. It would be a bit strange if the constituency MSs had it listed in their infoboxes but the regional MSs didn't. I remember there was a discussion of a similar nature some years back about MPs and peers: Members of the House of Commons had their term, constituency, predecessor and successor clearly listed but members of the House of Lords did not. There was a move to add succession boxes for the latter as well, perhaps in recognition that the invention of retirement and expulsion meant that life peerage was no longer synonymous with membership (hereditary peerage never was). In these instances there are no predecessors or successors listed (except for Lords Spiritual and hereditaries who win by-elections) since each life peerage is separate from the others and there is no fixed membership quota so we don't have any sense of one peer directly replacing another as MPs do. I still think we should think of something for the others (MEPs, MSPs, MLAs, AMs, MSs), though, as they do have defined (if broader than one) numbers and constituencies, so if X new members are elected for any seat then logically X old members are leaving. As I said, it looks as if the system I propose is already what most editors are doing for these pages but I just wanted to make sure. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 13:59, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't see a problem. I don't believe that people are going to notice a difference in the use of a field in an infobox and, from that, assume "that multi-member offices are inherently less noteworthy than single-member ones". I think they'll just assume that succession makes sense for constituency representatives but not for regional representatives. Bondegezou (talk) 14:02, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
I am worried that both the proposed scheme and some current practice is WP:OR. We can't make up rules! Are there any reliable sources that take this approach? If not, we shouldn't be doing it. Bondegezou (talk) 14:06, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
And not naming a predecessor in an infobox is hardly deameaning to the post or the postholder. If it's not possible to clearly identify a predecessor, then simply leave it out. Sionk (talk) 14:35, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
@JLo-Watson: You've made a number of recent edits for which the discussion here seems relevant. I suggest there isn't currently a consensus in favour of the approach you're using. Bondegezou (talk) 11:14, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
Recent editing has added things like "Member of the London Assembly as the 6th Additional Member" (emphasis added) to a lot of Assembly Members' article infoboxes' Office and I think this is a mistake. There is nothing in the Assembly that makes this sort of distinction. I don't see reliable sources talking in this way. I think this is inappropriate WP:OR. Can we agree to remove this language?
Likewise, all these infoboxes state a predecessor/successor based on who was the 6th additional member at the previous/next election. Again, this looks like WP:OR to me. Reliable sources don't do this. We can't make up our own scheme. Bondegezou (talk) 11:21, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
The stronger moral and high-brow editing ideal to which I far more strongly adhere is avoid bias by connotation (SIXTH + ADDITIONAL = twice negative qualifers and anti-democratic to stress in anything other than a footnote); this backs up your point. Separately I certainly think strikethrough in this context is not refreshingly clear and a broadly popular in other similar works middle-ground solution, nor obviously decision maths-based, but rather an Alice in Wonderland clause or a frankenstein.- Adam37 Talk 20:28, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm ambivalent on boxes, but I'd definitely agree that saying someone is the "Xth member" in a multi-member seat is not great - it implies a distinction that doesn't exist either officially or in practice. Andrew Gray (talk) 21:46, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Flag icons in infoboxes of offices

I'm noticing that flag icons are being added to the top of infoboxes of political offices (such as Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom), Speaker of the House of Commons (United Kingdom), etc.) for what appears to be purely decorative purposes. (Pinging @Daran755: who seems to be making the edits.) Unless there is a consensus I missed somewhere, MOS:DECOR and MOS:INFOBOXFLAG would apply - unless the icons serve an encyclopedic purpose there is no point in adding them. WildComet (talk) 14:22, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

The Manual of Style is clear: these should be removed. Bondegezou (talk) 06:58, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
Not sure we really need the coats of arms, either? Andrew Gray (talk) 21:47, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
As there have been no objections for 2 weeks since this was posted, there is consensus that these be removed. I will begin standardizing the articles. —WildComet talk 04:23, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Zack Polanski

Zack Polanski is one of the new London Assembly members. There's been some heated discussion/editing on the article, including by me, so some more input from others would be helpful at Talk:Zack Polanski. He's someone who has been politically active for several years, but at a low level, so there's not a lot of RS. There are three particular points of contention:

1. Polanski was David Paulden. I don't know why he changed his name, but we have early statements of candidates that show that. We said this in the article. One editor has removed this, describing it as "deadnaming". We have MOS:DEADNAME, but that applies to people who have changed their gender identity, which is not the case here. How do we handle someone's prior name when it doesn't have much coverage in RS, but which wasn't changed because of a change in gender identity?

2. There is a "scandal" in Polanski's past. He cooperated with The Sun for a story in 2013 about whether hypnotherapy can make your breasts bigger. (He's a hypnotherapist.) This came to light more recently and he apologised for it. We have RS coverage of the apology. Obviously The Sun is not RS, but I had included a link to the original Sun article as we are allowed to link to non-RS articles when they have become the topic themselves. I've since removed that link following Talk discussion. Should we be covering this story at all? If so, how should we cover it?

3. There's also been some back and forth on how to cover Polanski's non-political career (as an actor and hypnotherapist). How much space and what prominence should we give to these matters when Polanski is notable as a politician rather than as an actor or hypnotherapist?

Any input welcome. Bondegezou (talk) 10:17, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Wiltshire PCC by-election

The Police and Crime Commissioner for Wiltshire by-election will be held in August (https://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/news/pcc-election-update). I don't know if we will have an article for it. I'm not sure we need one, give the potential for a record breaking low turnout. (The West Midlands PCC by-election turnout barely touched 10%). doktorb wordsdeeds 11:40, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I would note that turnout doesn't decide whether an election is notable or not (although it may well be the most interesting part!). PinkPanda272 (talk/contribs) 12:54, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
Given that we don't have a separate article on the original election, I think it makes sense to also cover the by-election in the 2021 England and Wales police and crime commissioner elections article. Number 57 10:56, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

COI

Hello, I've found a high chance of WP:COI.

Look at these contributions.

Westminster Digital is a digital marketing agency which has done work for Boris Johnson and other high profile figures.

The founder of Westminster Digital, Craig Dillon was added to Sky News presenters and editorial team, Daniel Radcliffe, List of alumni of the University of Westminster, Lord Voldemort.

It created the page for Westminster Digital and has edited it 4 other times.

This account created a page for Daniel Janner and has included him in several articles. 1 2. Some claim Daniel Janner has hired Dillon and Westminster Digital. Claim 1 Claim 2.

Good chance this account is either Dillon himself or a staffer from Westminster Digital. I suggest a high chance of WP:COI.

Nexus000 (talk) 08:33, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Conservative Islamophobia inquiry

With the release of the report on the Conservative Islamophobia inquiry, Islamophobia in the UK Conservative Party (1997–present) could do with a major review and/or rehaul of content. I've tried to update the page but I haven't read the report; if anyone has any edits to make to the article I'd greatly appreciate it. --Bangalamania (talk) 12:43, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Antisemitism in the Conservative Party

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Antisemitism_in_the_UK_Conservative_Party#Deleted_passages for several sourced passages deleted from the Antisemitism in the UK Conservative Party article that would benefit from more eyes (only the deleter and me have expressed an opinion so hard to reach a consensus. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:29, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Lists of office holders

I was carrying out some edits on Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and First Secretary of State and I couldn't find a single template for lists of office holders. Is there one and, if not, could we establish one? FollowTheTortoise (talk) 16:37, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Brian Rose

Brian Rose recently stood in the 2020 London Mayoral election. Now that is over, there is discussion over his article and more input would be useful. The main discussion is at Talk:Brian_Rose_(podcaster)#Promoting_COVID-19_information. All thoughts welcome. Bondegezou (talk) 14:05, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

We're still rather deadlocked, so more input would be very welcome. We have progressed as far as Talk:Brian_Rose_(podcaster)#7_choices, which lays out the options in a clearer manner! Bondegezou (talk) 18:23, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Coat of arms, or not?

Article on govt minister who got a life peerage in retirement. Should his coat of arms be included?

Discussion at Talk:John Moore, Baron Moore of_Lower Marsh#Arms. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:36, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Access to Information Central Clearing House

From an article in today's Guardian reporting on a legal judgement that is highly critical of this entity:

[Judge] Hughes said the Cabinet Office had offered an out-of-date Wikipedia entry as evidence that information about the Clearing House was available to the public.

Rather than attempt a rapid update, I felt it might be (more) helpful to post here. 86.186.168.129 (talk) 15:51, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

United Kingdom Parliament constituencies page move

Hi. Please see this discussion. Thanks. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 06:37, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies) is well established and agreed upon. doktorb wordsdeeds 06:50, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
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