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*'''Conditional oppose'''. I can see the merit of listing all the elections, but it risks getting very bulky. I would support this if there was some way of having the table initially list only the change elections, but be expandable to list all the elections. --[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="font-variant:small-caps"><span style="color:#663200;">Brown</span>HairedGirl</span>]] <small>[[User talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> |
*'''Conditional oppose'''. I can see the merit of listing all the elections, but it risks getting very bulky. I would support this if there was some way of having the table initially list only the change elections, but be expandable to list all the elections. --[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="font-variant:small-caps"><span style="color:#663200;">Brown</span>HairedGirl</span>]] <small>[[User talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> |
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====Re-elections option, variant suggestion==== |
====Re-elections option, variant suggestion==== |
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*'''Support''' This is clearer, concise, and logical. I will now be a little less brief about my objections to the first suggestion. [[User:Doktorbuk|doktorb]] <sub>[[User talk:Doktorbuk|words]]</sub><sup>[[Special:Contributions/Doktorbuk|deeds]]</sup> 16:58, 3 April 2021 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' This is clearer, concise, and logical. I will now be a little less brief about my objections to the first suggestion. [[User:Doktorbuk|doktorb]] <sub>[[User talk:Doktorbuk|words]]</sub><sup>[[Special:Contributions/Doktorbuk|deeds]]</sup> 16:58, 3 April 2021 (UTC) |
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*'''Support''' Both options are preferable to the current system, which is confusing from a reader's perspective and could be perceived as undue weight. I prefer this option as it is more concise, but I suppose it comes down to whether we value a more accurate representation of each MP's length in office over length. [[User:PinkPanda272|PinkPanda272]] ([[User talk:PinkPanda272|talk]]/[[Special:Contributions/PinkPanda272|contribs]]) 18:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC) |
*'''Support''' Both options are preferable to the current system, which is confusing from a reader's perspective and could be perceived as undue weight. I prefer this option as it is more concise, but I suppose it comes down to whether we value a more accurate representation of each MP's length in office over length. [[User:PinkPanda272|PinkPanda272]] ([[User talk:PinkPanda272|talk]]/[[Special:Contributions/PinkPanda272|contribs]]) 18:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC) |
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*'''Conditional oppose'''. I can see the merit of listing all the elections, but it risks getting very bulky in cases where the same MP had long service. I would support this if there was some way of having the table initially list only the change elections, but be expandable to list all the elections.<br />For extreme examples, see [[Liverpool Scotland (UK Parliament constituency)|Liverpool Scotland]], where [[TP O'Connor]] won 13 successive elections, and [[Rushcliffe (UK Parliament constituency)|Rushcliffe]], where [[Ken Clarke]] also won 13 in a row. --[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="font-variant:small-caps"><span style="color:#663200;">Brown</span>HairedGirl</span>]] <small>[[User talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> |
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===Simple list option=== |
===Simple list option=== |
Revision as of 22:45, 3 April 2021
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This is the talk page for WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom. | |||
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Request for comment on reliability of The Canary
There is a request for comment on the reliability of The Canary. If you are interested, please participate at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard § RfC: The Canary. — Newslinger talk 04:38, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
Broken results graphics
2019_Armagh_City,_Banbridge_and_Craigavon_Borough_Council_election#Council_composition, 2019_Ards_and_North_Down_Borough_Council_election#Council_composition and all the other 2019 Northern Irish council elections use this style of results graphic where you have a line, split into coloured segments for each party, with an arrow showing what you need for a majority. Previous discussions have agreed that these should never be used because they do not reliably display. On some screens, particularly with mobile devices, they display incorrectly: the arrow often doesn't work, small parties' segments are shown too big as the graphic won't shrink smaller than the numbers within it, etc. There's also the issue of what order to put the parties in as this can incorrectly imply a coalition, alliance or friendship between parties.
I can just go through and remove all of these, but does anyone have ideas for what to replace these with? Bondegezou (talk) 13:44, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- The parliament diagrams might be an option? But yes, I agree these graphics are awful and I remove them on sight. Number 57 14:11, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
- I'm going to start removing them from these articles. Others are welcome to swoop in with replacements. Bondegezou (talk) 16:29, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
2021 Bristol City Council election
Hi, while patrolling the recent changes, I noticed that the latests edits to 2021 Bristol City Council election article were made by IPs and by editors with very little editing history. I think someone familiar with this subject ought to take a look.--JBchrch (talk) 15:01, 11 March 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- @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 likedata-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)
- @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)
- 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)
- To make a name sortable you need something like
- 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)
- 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 | style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | 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 | style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Luton North (Labour, 1997-2017)
Luton North (independent, 2017-2019) |
Angela Watkinson | 18 Nov 1941 | 7 Jun 2001 | 3 May 2017 | style="background-color: Template:Conservative Party (UK)/meta/color" | | 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 | style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Labour | Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (1997-2005)
Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (2005-2010) |
Kelvin Hopkins | 22 Aug 1941 | 1 May 1997 | 6 Nov 2019 | style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Labour (1997-2017)
independent (2017-2019) |
Luton North |
Angela Watkinson | 18 Nov 1941 | 7 Jun 2001 | 3 May 2017 | style="background-color: Template:Conservative Party (UK)/meta/color" | | 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 | style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Labour | Cumbernauld and Kilsyth
Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East |
1997, 2001, 2005 |
Kelvin Hopkins | 22 Aug 1941 | 1 May 1997 | 6 Nov 2019 | style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Labour
independent |
Luton North | 1997, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2017 |
Angela Watkinson | 18 Nov 1941 | 7 Jun 2001 | 3 May 2017 | style="background-color: Template:Conservative Party (UK)/meta/color" | | 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)
- 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)
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 | style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | 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 | style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Labour (1997-2017) | Luton North | England | 1 May 1997 | 6 Nov 2019 |
style="background-color: Template:Independent politician/meta/color" | | Independent (2017-2019) | ||||||||
[img] | Angela Watkinson | 18 Nov 1941 | Female | style="background-color: Template:Conservative Party (UK)/meta/color" | | 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)
- Right! Constituency-country pairs all sorted - report. Still need to fix the last handful of parties but will have the draft table done in a few days. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:44, 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)
- {[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)
- 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)
- @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)
- 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)
- 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)
Legal Aid Agency
Majolie1912 (talk) 15:02, 17 March 2021 (UTC) Hi, I'm looking to improve Wikipedia's article titled 'Legal Aid Agency.' This is currently a stub class so needs more secondary sources and inline citations. So far, I have added in 8 referenced secondary sources, however would like to expand the article further to explore the works and progress of the legal aid agency over the years. Please let me know if you have any insights or would like to help. Majolie1912 (talk) 14:57, 17 March 2021 (UTC) Majolie1912 (talk) 15:02, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
- I can't help, but I've added this as a new discussion so it isn't hidden in the one above. TrottieTrue (talk) 17:29, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
Privilege of peerage at FAR
FemkeMilene has nominated Privilege of peerage for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 20:06, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Upcoming Super Thursday
In advance of the 2019 general election I asked for help in removing suggestions of incumbency from the biographies of former MPs. Five years ago I did the same slog for MSPs, MAs and MLAs.
This time around the Scottish Parliament will not dissolve until the day before the election. The Welsh Parliament will dissolve on 29th April. The Northern Ireland Assembly is now off-cycle and not due again until 2022. Is is worth bothering to edit the articles of MSPs and MSs this time?
When last I raised this point it was suggested that special code could be used to automatically hide the post-nominals during purdah, but I have not heard anything further on the matter. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 00:30, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
- I would say no for MSPs, except the ones that aren't seeking re-election (which looks to be quite a lot this year). The Senedd might be an easier task seeing as there are only 60 members. I'm happy to help with any tasks we agree on though. PinkPanda272 (talk/contribs) 07:30, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
- I agree with PinkPanda272. It would be worth editing the articles of MSs and the MSPs who are not standing for re-election to remove references to incumbency. As for the MSPs who are standing for re-election, though it would be nice for accuracy, it might be logistically difficult to remove all references to incumbency and then, less than 24 hours later, readd in many (dare I say almost all?) cases. In any case, I'd also be happy to help. FollowTheTortoise (talk) 12:01, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
Gavin Williamson re-assessment
Gavin Williamson is rated as a Start-Class article in respect of WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom. The article appears to have been developed and it may be time for a reassessment of the article. However, I do not feel confident enough with the assessment guidelines to conduct such an assessment myself. RoanokeVirginia (talk) 23:49, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
- Given what he's doing to education in the UK, "start class" would be a fair reflection of where he needs to be. [<<< joke] Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:11, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Dates of birth for politicians and an IP User
- It seems there was recently a debate (see archived discussions) about whether to use “raw data” from the Parliament website as a source for MPs dates of birth. An unregistered IP user has been obsessively removing the dates of birth for the 2019 intake of MPs, presumably where these *appear* to come from the raw data or even just because they are “unsourced”. The concerning thing is that User:Andrew Gray noted in these discussions that 500 of the 650 MPs have DOBs which come from the Parliament raw data. That doesn’t bother me, but some users, particularly the IP address, might object. Will the IP User go through the 500 and delete their DOBs? I hope not. For some reason, they seem to be mostly monitoring the new intake, who are often missing a DOB. Pre-2019 MPs have DOBs which don’t appear to be directly referenced (including the prime minister, but does a fact like this always need a reference?).
- I added dates (month and year) for some new MPs from their Companies House profile, but these were swiftly removed and the user left a message on my talk page telling me they were primary sources and therefore unacceptable.
- I then added a number of DOBs to articles using Politics.co.uk as a reference. There’s a possibility that this site has borrowed heavily from the Wikipedia articles, including the DOBs, but it could be the other way round. Now the IP user, presumably watching all these articles on new MPs, has raised the reliability of Politics.co.uk as a source here. They’ve been quite abusive in their discourse with other users.
- I’ve also had two of my edits reverted by the user this week. One was Christian Wakeford, an edit in which I largely reorganised the article, as the content was a bit jumbled. Then my edit on Nigel Evans was reverted, in which I had tidied up the article by moving his court case to a new section in the article, instead of having it hidden under “personal life”. I undid both reverts. Funnily enough, Evans’ DOB has no direct reference in the article, though neither does Joe Biden’s!
- I suggest that the IP user is mostly monitoring the DOBs for the new intake. Incidentally, one of their accounts had a temporary block on it, so they have caused problems before. The user’s IP has been located in Hackney, Rotherhithe, Shadwell, Manchester and Washington (Sunderland/Gateshead). As some of their edits have been on Poplar and Limehouse, I’d hazard a guess they’re in Shadwell. I also wonder if their editing is biased in some way - a Conservative activist, maybe? Their activity makes me think all users ought be registered in order to edit, but I think that debate has sadly gone nowhere before. They’re clearly a bit of a nuisance though, and rather uncivil.
- Maybe MPs’ articles should be automatically protected, so only extended confirmed users can edit them?
- The issue of DOBs for newer MPs remains open though. I think the only “reliable” source for many dates is The Times Guide to the House of Commons. Unfortunately, that book is pretty expensive, and not even stocked by my library. A contact of mine did provide me with several DOBs from his copy of the book. I’ve asked him to help with other missing dates, but does no one else here have it? The book is actually missing some DOBs, so I wonder if those will remain absent from the articles indefinitely... I hope not.
- It was pretty hard work checking the 2019 intake and adding DOBs from Politics.co.uk, so I’d rather not have all that undone. Adding [citation needed] or [better source needed] would be preferable to removing the dates outright, IMO. I personally don’t see the need to have every MP’s DOB sourced with a reference footnote. We could do with a freely available reliable website which listed such information... Who’s Who is generally good for previous intakes of MPs, but their data is sparse for the 2019 group, it appears. TrottieTrue (talk) 12:04, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
- I cant see anything wrong with using reliable primary sources for facts like a date of birth. MilborneOne (talk) 13:20, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
- I agree. I don’t see what’s wrong with using something like Companies House, which is freely and publicly available. My contact with the Times book has other DOBs not in the book, I believe, probably obtained from public records, but these wouldn’t be allowed as a source on Wikipedia, even though I’m sure I have seen Ancestry and Free BMD used as references here. And there’s been a discussion about using the House of Commons data for MPs’ dates of birth, in which it was pointed out that the data is accurate to the best of their knowledge, and it’s not just any old source, it’s a database on the UK Parliament website. Some editors are even against using the dates if they were published on the MPs’ profiles at the Parliament website. It just seems petty, a bit like the over-zealous way that every Daily Mail reference has been removed by a particular editor.—TrottieTrue (talk) 14:41, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
- It seems that some articles do still use the Parliament Data Services link, so I hope those references won't be purged. The previous discussions seem to keep referring to the "raw data", which I think essentially means an XML webpage from which the Parliament Data Services search facility draws its information (I can't even see any dates of birth on that page, so maybe it's more complicated than simply searching the text). I think it's in a beta mode, and clearly something that only those with the technical know-how can use: it isn't readily accessible to members of the public. It certainly couldn't be described as "user-friendly". I emailed the House of Commons website to ask if they could publish the dates of birth. The reply which came back said:
- "Thank you for your recent email in which you asked for the dates of birth of MPs to be added to their biographical pages.
- I have sought advice from a colleague regarding your enquiry and have been informed that the dates of birth that are available for MPs on the parliament website have been obtained with the consent of the MP in question.
- I was also advised that in a number of cases, the MP will not consent to having their date of birth published on the site and so consequently it is not published.
- Finally, my colleague also mentioned that they are not allowed to use data from public sources to enter on the parliamentary website without the consent of the MP.
- I hope that this is useful."
- The response has been trimmed to show the relevant bits. I've replied asking where the dates of birth can actually be found. The House of Commons Enquiry Service must be aware that the DOBs have been published by them online in a roundabout way, since that's what they seem to be referring to.--TrottieTrue (talk) 18:11, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- Remember the discussions at WP:RSN here and WP:BLPNhere are taking place too. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 18:30, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, but those are Archive discussions, so I didn't want to add to them. Although the debate clearly is still ongoing.--TrottieTrue (talk) 21:00, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- Had another reply from the House of Commons:
- "I have again sought guidance from a colleague and it appears that the information I previously provided was incorrect, so please accept my apologies for this misinformation. Information regarding MPs ages are not available on the website.
- However, you may find the following House of Commons Library papers useful:
- House of Commons Trends: The Age of MPs
- Social background of Members of Parliament 1979-2019
- I hope that this is useful and again please accept my apologies for the error in my earlier email."
- [Email trimmed]—TrottieTrue (talk) 12:08, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, but those are Archive discussions, so I didn't want to add to them. Although the debate clearly is still ongoing.--TrottieTrue (talk) 21:00, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- I cant see anything wrong with using reliable primary sources for facts like a date of birth. MilborneOne (talk) 13:20, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
Prior discussion at here and here recently reached a consensus on this. Let's stick to that. Bondegezou (talk) 08:29, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
- I'm not sure you could call those discussions a "consensus". Some agree the Parliament data isn't a RS, some don't. Perhaps those who prefer not to use the Parliament data are larger in number, but it isn't a formal consensus. The fact is, the vast majority of incumbent MPs following the 2019 election (ie. those already in Parliament before) have Wikipedia DOBs extracted from the Parliament data, according to what I've read here. Although without fastidiously checking each one, we don't truly know how long those DOBs have been there, or what the source was. It doesn't seem to be the norm for WP DOBs to be immediately followed with a reference, but new additions for the 2019 intake seem to have attracted a higher level of scrutiny. It looks like the Parliament data is intended to be found by running a query at UK Parliament - Members' Names Data Platform, but it clearly isn't designed for the average member of the public to use. Personally, I see no issue with using data published by the UK Parliament as a source, but it clearly seems to cause disputes. The only other RS for now that I'm aware of is The Times Guide to the House of Commons.--TrottieTrue (talk) 17:27, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
- There was an extensive discussion. Most editors seem happy with how things ended, which was not to consider this an appropriate source. I am happy to reiterate my position from those discussions again here, which is that we have a policy on this at WP:DOB and we have to follow that, and that means we err on the side of caution and do not use this source. Bondegezou (talk) 18:27, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
- There wasn't really a formal consensus though, even if a number of editors seem to be "happy" with it. I certainly don't agree with them, although I accept that they object to the UK Parliament's data being used. Granted, it's not published in a very obvious place, but I don't think the UK Parliament website could be regarded as anything other than a "reliable source" for this info. It's generally the norm for frontline politicians to have DOBs on their article, but few "widely available" publications actually carry it. But how long before the DOBs are systematically removed from ALL current MPs without an inline reference to the source? I just worry that's where this kind of overzealous removal of DOBs will lead. And in reply to your comment at one of those discussions, many people would use WP as an "almanac of birthdays"; there's nothing to suggest they shouldn't.--TrottieTrue (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
- If DOBs are removed from ALL current MPs without an inline reference to the source, then good, that is a correct application of WP:V, WP:BLP and WP:DOB. Those are policies. We have to follow them. Bondegezou (talk) 20:17, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
- But then are we going to go around removing the DOBs for every living person? Even the likes of Joe Biden don't have inline citations for their DOB. It seems excessive to me, and ultimately creates more work for other editors. You may think that a DOB is the "least interesting thing" about a person, but others like myself would disagree. We don't have to follow those policies to the exact letter - which, in any case, are usually open to interpretation. I think knowing the exact age of our public representatives is important; they put themselves up for scrutiny when they enter the profession. Hence why no less a publication than Who's Who includes it in their entries. The published sources which list an MP's DOB are actually few: Who's Who seems to have the older ones, but it's not so good at the newer intake. There is also a book by Iain Dale and Jacqui Smith which has profiles of Women MPs, including dates of birth. The Times Guide to the HOC is expensive though. I'm hoping to get access to a copy of it somehow, to add some of the missing dates.--TrottieTrue (talk) 19:15, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
- If DOBs are removed from ALL current MPs without an inline reference to the source, then good, that is a correct application of WP:V, WP:BLP and WP:DOB. Those are policies. We have to follow them. Bondegezou (talk) 20:17, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
- There wasn't really a formal consensus though, even if a number of editors seem to be "happy" with it. I certainly don't agree with them, although I accept that they object to the UK Parliament's data being used. Granted, it's not published in a very obvious place, but I don't think the UK Parliament website could be regarded as anything other than a "reliable source" for this info. It's generally the norm for frontline politicians to have DOBs on their article, but few "widely available" publications actually carry it. But how long before the DOBs are systematically removed from ALL current MPs without an inline reference to the source? I just worry that's where this kind of overzealous removal of DOBs will lead. And in reply to your comment at one of those discussions, many people would use WP as an "almanac of birthdays"; there's nothing to suggest they shouldn't.--TrottieTrue (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
- There was an extensive discussion. Most editors seem happy with how things ended, which was not to consider this an appropriate source. I am happy to reiterate my position from those discussions again here, which is that we have a policy on this at WP:DOB and we have to follow that, and that means we err on the side of caution and do not use this source. Bondegezou (talk) 18:27, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Policy discussion: Candidate/results boxes
Good evening all. I don't know if this has to become a formal RFC at this stage, and would welcome any guidance and advice on turning this discussion into, eventually, a formal addition to Wikipedia policy, if only for those of us here in the UK politics project if not wider afield.
I'll tag as many of you as possible into this post to encourage debate and discussion. Apologies if you don't wish to be involved. Apologies if I miss anyone out.
Context
I have been an active editor on Wikipedia for many years, over a decade. When I started editing 'properly' we had very few articles suffixed by "UK Parliament constituency" and with the help of many editors, some of whom may be amongst you in this discussion, much of the structure of these articles was born from our efforts in those early days. Indeed somewhere in the MOS is the instruction that "UK Parliament constituency" must be included in article titles, a decision made from a discussion such as this.
One perennial issue from the early days which carries on being a hurdle to cross is the candidate box, which ultimately becomes the results box, and how to deal with candidates being chosen in the run up to polling day, and for connected purposes. As it happens, 600+ days after the last one, two Westminster by-elections are up, and the two articles show very different sides to the candidate box problem.
Having seen much to-and-fro in one article in particular, I've decided to start this discussion and, hopefully, come to a decision about this perennial "magnet for all sorts" as I thought about calling it earlier.
The problems
In the UK, candidates rarely get chosen through US-style primaries, or through open lists or anything of the like. Indeed most Prospective Parliamentary Candidates are chosen by a small membership of each party in very internal, mostly secretive processes. For small parties and one-man bands, these are not really selections at all, per se. They are announcements, and largely these days, announcements made on Twitter or Facebook. The lack of any primary selection or formal process reduces the likelihood of there being WP:RS citations for candidate choices to near-as-dammnit to zero as it's possible to get.
Over the 10+ years I've been here, candidate selection becomes attractive for editors of all kinds - veteran and newbie, IP and admin, well-meaning and self-publicist alike. It's very frustrating in the run-up to a general election to have 600+ pages ripe for editors desperate to get their candidate on a Wikipedia page. Whether we like it or not, Wikipedia can be a cheap promotional tool for candidates, particularly independents and also-rans. They are eager to see their party and candidate name in an "official" capacity, and our candidate boxes look fairly "official", with party colours and a ballot paper order format. It's little wonder in the run-up to a high profile by-election, such as Hartlepool, that there are plenty of back-and-forth editing, amongst IPs and registered editors alike, over candidate selection and the candidate box.
I want to deal with two main problems. The first is the wider issue, that of the need to include a candidate box at all, prior to the publication of the Statement of Persons Nominated by the local authority. As I've been reminded recently, Wikipedia is not the place to rely on primary sources, but luckily for us, the SOPN is published by news sources and other websites. Now I'm a stickler for being accurate (I'm the editor most likely to change an "independent" candidate to "no label" or "no description" if their ballot paper description is blank, as candidates are permitted to do.) The SOPN, whilst a primary source, is our best place to go for clarifying exactly who has been nominated, for whom, and with what ballot paper description. (Remember that on the Register of Political Parties, each party can use any one of 12 alternative ballot paper descriptions, with no necessity to include the name of their party, which might require checking who exactly is being nominated if it turns out that "For Freedom of Speech" is the ballot paper description of UKIP or what-have-you.)
Some editors seem to be happy with having prose describe which party has nominated which candidate, or has indicated intention to nominate candidates, and have no candidate box at all until the publication of the SOPN. I would call this "the prose option."
Some editors seem to be happy with having an updated candidate box happening essentially "in real time" as and when candidates are chosen, and to have prose alongside this where required. I'd call this "the box option."
The second problem is sourcing. It's true that Wikipedia policy is the leading, stronger force here. We need reliable sources, and yes, they should not be primary sources. However, times are changing. Social media often feeds 'mainstream' news sources, and rarely do we get the candidate announcement in the newspapers before Twitter. IP editors and enthusiastic supporters often rush to articles to get their candidate in print, so to speak, falling foul of WP:NOTBLOG and NEWSTICKER and a few others more besides. We can blow hot and cold about the suitability of using social media sources, particularly if the FOO Party Twitter source is desperately trying to include Jane Smith as the FOO Party candidate regardless of any source outside themselves.
The straw poll
As the sourcing question can often be answered with Wikipedia's wider policy on such matters, this straw poll and wider discussion is more focused on the candidate box. Let's be clear. We are facing elections in May across hundreds of pages, scores and scores of candidate boxes in Wales and complicated candidate/results boxes in Scotland. We need to consider how to keep too much disruption at bay. This policy decision, if that's what it is, will help shape our policy on these articles now and in the future, including the next UK general election, which will happen with boundary changes, meaning a double-trouble of creating new constituency articles alongside dealing with candidate selection.
So over to you. We can have "the prose option", which would mean hosting no candidate box in an election/by-election article until the publication of the SOPN. We can have "the box option" which would allow for the candidate box to be hosted in an election/by-election article alongside prose where necessary.
The result of this would mean that all Parliamentary election articles - incorporating Westminster, Senedd, Holyrood and Stormont - would have this policy enacted upon them.
For background to this, I point you to our dual by-election articles, one which is much busier than the other. One is 2021 Hartlepool by-election and the other is 2021 Airdrie and Shotts by-election
Tagging editors
I draw the attention of the following editors to this discussion, please can you publicise it further if you can. @TSP:, @Bondegezou:, @Jdcooper:. @BitterGiant:, @Consgay:, @Chessrat:, @JDuggan:, @BrownHairedGirl:, @Galloglass:, @Timrollpickering:, @Warofdreams:, @JMPhillips92:
Discussion: "The Prose Option"
- Oppose. It just makes the information more difficult to find.--TrottieTrue (talk) 21:05, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- Support: Thanks to Doktorbuk for starting this discussion. I assume it is too late now for any decision to affect what happens in preparation for the May elections (seeing as the notices of candidates will be published later this week), but I agree that it will be beneficial for future elections to have some form of consensus on this. I have mainly stayed clear of election boxes so far this month, as I see no reason to add candidates on a piecemeal basis when we will soon have an authoritative source. However it is inevitable that news of candidate selections emerges before the SOPN is released, and it is beneficial from a reader's perspective to include candidates before they are officially confirmed. Election boxes without results in don't look great due to the blank spaces, and they can be confusing when there is an apparent omission from a major party, leading to editors adding placeholder rows without candidate names and so forth. With this in mind I would support having a prose summary as standard (which admittedly is an idea that has passed me by), as it is more space-efficient and will hopefully encourage editors to provide at least basic sourcing (a lack of which is a common pattern in pre-SOPN election boxes). PinkPanda272 (talk/contribs) 21:29, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose Having walls of text encourages bloat especially about the finer details of selection that frankly aren't encyclopedic or candidates who declare but then drop out early on and makes it hard to read the detail. Having a clear table setting out all the known candidates is much easier to read. Not every party contests every seat so absences are inevitable and those that haven't yet selected/declared can be covered by a note. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:40, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- Ambivalent. In principle I'd prefer running text until we have a clear sense of who is and is not standing, as it can get a bit misleading when there is a table (implying a bit of clarity and structure) that only has partial data. But I think it's going to be very practically challenging to implement a rule - the tables are so ubiquitous and so standard that people will expect them, and they'll get added quickly if they're seen to be missing. Trying to oppose that with policy seems like it would just cause a lot of friction. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:22, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- Support. The main reason I favour the prose option is that a candidate box looks to readers like an authoritative statement of who is running, when in fact until SOPN it is nothing of the sort, just plans and rumours, with gaps. It's no plus point to make the information easier to find if the information is not authoritative. We may understand that absences are inevitable and Party X simply hasn't confirmed their candidate yet, but readers using our articles in the meantime may well not appreciate that. When the SOPN is released, the candidacies become cold facts, and are then clearly best presented in a candidate box. The selection procedures, as in the case of the Hartlepool by-election article, require more contextual explanation than can reasonably be provided by a box. I respectfully disagree with Timrollpickering's argument that prose invites bloat, any more than any other article on Wikipedia. Bloat, where it appears, can easily be pruned, but surely many if not most articles will feature prose alongside the box anyway? Whereas candidate boxes are magnets for party activists to add Candidate X, often without sourcing or based on a Tweet. Jdcooper (talk) 01:50, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
- Ambivalent. Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia. That is, a set of prose articles about things and events. It is not Wikimanac, an almanac of facts. Too much editing of election articles focuses on tables and infoboxes rather than on prose. Articles about by-elections should be focused on why they are important and the significance of their results (when we get them). Something like 2019 Brecon and Radnorshire by-election is a good example. We should be encouraging high-quality content discussing the issues. That content also needs to follow Wikipedia policy and be well sourced, so we need a focus on reliable secondary sources and be wary of content added without sourcing, based on tweets, or based on original research. That all said, if you have a situation with reliable secondary sourcing for a large number of candidates, sometimes the clearest way to present that information is in a table. I think tables are added too quickly to by-election articles -- they seem pointless when there are one or two candidates only -- but they can be useful and I don't think we should privilege the SOPN (a primary source) over good secondary source reporting. I concur with concerns that a table can appear overly authoritative when its content may be partial, but I think we can tackle that by taking care how we introduce and populate a table. So, I recommend article prose first (which is the advice for writing infoboxes), a focus on good sourcing, and discouraging tables too early, but I do not oppose tables in all situations. I don't think we should have a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS saying "You can't have a table until the SOPN", but we could have a Project note with guidelines, which focuses on sourcing. Bondegezou (talk) 09:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
- Ambivalent. This is not a dichotomy, have both when prose adds something, such as a method of selection. I agree with virtually everything said below. The table (box) to avoid needless frictions should be warned off with a new template "Proposed Candidates" to warn editors that it is to be used, rather than one the old standard that clearly connotes the ballot is underway and screams "get your pencil ready".- Adam37 Talk 11:18, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Discussion: "The Box Option"
- Support this. The times are indeed changing, and Wikipedia is relied upon as a source of updated news by many. The local council won't be keeping a running track of the candidates, as they aren't official until the SOPN (which IMO is fine as a source). It's good to have one easily accessible place where those interested can see who has been selected. If things change, and said candidate doesn't end up on the SOPN, they can simply be deleted. I tried adding Brian Rose to the list of candidates for this year's London Mayoral election several months ago, but it was reverted, with the reasoning that there was no news source to verify it. I think it was just an announcement on his website. However, he clearly had declared his intention to stand, and is now on the article, with a local news website as the source. In any case, his name could have been deleted if it turned out he wasn't standing (and I don't think there is a SOPN yet, so there's no guarantee he'll be on the ballot paper). So I say yes, keep a rolling candidate box which can be updated as and when news is known. I do think that also having some prose about candidate choices is good though, where brief information on them can be included. Incidentally, I assume that the author of the original post, User:Doktorbuk, is the same person I've seen posting at Polling Report UK, a blog for UK elections polling - is that right, @Doktorbuk?--TrottieTrue (talk) 21:04, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- @TrottieTrue: Yes indeed, though I've not posted there for many, many years! Nice that I'm remembered :) doktorb wordsdeeds 23:47, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Doktorbuk: Thanks for confirming, I guessed so, as it's not the most common username. I didn't think I had seen your name on there lately. It's pretty quiet these days, but I enjoy reading the old threads from 2013 onwards which are still live on the site. That's probably where I remembered seeing your name, catching up on old posts. :) --TrottieTrue (talk) 23:53, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
- What sort of box? As with my comments above, I think a table of candidates can be appropriate at times. However, my objection is to the habit on UK by-election articles to use an election results box, but with the votes received cells left blank. I don't know where this habit came from. If you look at other (non-by-election, non-UK) election articles, they generally do not have results boxes until there are results, although they may often have tables of candidates or parties. If we do have tables of candidates, they should be tables of candidates, not unpopulated results boxes. So not this, but OK with this. Bondegezou (talk) 09:10, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Ministers of State and Parliamentary Under Secretaries of State
I've noticed a lot of Minister of State for, Parliamentary of State for etc. pages being created recently, but the issue with these sorts of pages is that their purviews are so fluid that it can be rather difficult to keep track of when, when a new minister is appointed, a new office is created versus when they are just replacing a minister in an already-created office. Part of the issue comes from the fact that offices of Minister of State and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State rank, unlike those of Secretary of State rank, don't have Transfer of Function Orders when they're created.
Take Minister of State, Ministry of Justice for example, a rather well known example of a junior office. That page used to be called Minister of State for Prisons, but that hasn't been the name of the office, at least according to the article, since 2002. It is also the case that that particular office has varied between being of Minister of State rank, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State rank and not existing at all, again according to the article. It is clearly to its author's credit that they've managed to create a list of past holders. Therefore, I suggest that instead of having individual pages for every office of Minister of State and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State rank, we just have one article called, for example, Junior ministers, Ministry of Justice, for each department. Such an article would include every Minister of State and Parliamentary Secretary of State that that department has ever had and would remove any confusion over purviews. What does anybody else think? FollowTheTortoise (talk) 21:43, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
- I've thought about these a lot and I share your concerns. I'm really not very convinced of their notability or verifiability. I'm also not sure there's much encyclopaedic to say about these various offices, or the holding of them - the duties of each office holder will vary so wildly that it's really nothing more than a list of people who at some point held junior ministerial office in that department - and even that becomes difficult when you consider the constant reshuffling of some areas (such as universities, say). I can see that it becomes very attractive to try and track office-holders throughout time but I'm not sure it's possible to do it in any kind of accurate or meaningful way, and I'm not sure what we're adding that services such as the new https://members.parliament.uk pages don't already provide - for example, [1]. ninety:one 23:04, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
The capitalisation of UK political offices
I've started a discussion on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style concerning the capitalisation of UK political offices. If you're interested, you can find it here. FollowTheTortoise (talk) 16:59, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
FAR of United Kingdom corporation tax
I have nominated United Kingdom corporation tax for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. FemkeMilene (talk) 19:17, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Each UK constituency: Members of Parliament: re-election(s) to prevent the graphical bias of this section? Suggestion
- The inspiration (the precedent)
Article: Battersea (UK Parliament constituency) as it was before 2017 then again, but better, throughout late Spring 2017. Section: Members of Parliament
- The editors who carried this out/devised this
User:Bkissin & User:82.5.106.137
- The revision to current format as is used across the board and the effect
Adding of re-election year, if any, to our lists of all MPs. Purpose: to encapsulate briefly and with due weight shown – for each election vied for – the local successfulness of each MP. By-product: in non ultra-safe seats it duly gives a fairer graphic to parties' (and hence 99% of MPs) respective electoral success, which the current colour blocks do not (spectacularly). This is better than when a very-long re-elected MP just is given one table line, perhaps amid a raft of other-affiliated others. I will call this the re-elections option. The present format is the simple list option.
Let's see what has happened to the extra column and rows that came in, work of User:Bkissin, in 2010. I duly removed it per the discussion of January 2017 in my talk. The rows (which would suffice; the numbering column stressing a new Parliament (of all things) was certainly over-the-top or totally US-style) detailed out how many re-elections the winner saw. I did so as did not have time to make the case here so conceded it for the time being and wondered what the eventual outcome(s) might be.
There followed, briefly, a more muted come-back and it held sway for a few weeks, passing by other notable editors, with a hint of success. Namely, on 21 April 2017 User:82.5.106.137 introduced a fairly lovely, but highly primitive, such as needing a two row sub-mergers, abbreviated, non-obsolete coding style of simply some more rows. These clarify instances of more elections won.
This was rejected: 7 June 2017 by User:DavyCrockettJones. He hadn't discussed this. But nor had User:82.5.106.137 in his/her muted re-introduction. The later editor wrote "use same format as other articles". The same argument is made by two contributors in my talk page. So who made the original invention? It was by User:Bkissin on the 10th May 2010 and looked like this. I was struck by the beauty of Bkissin's style, yet I think it a bit grand – we don't assign numbers to parliaments in even broadsheets here unless being very quaint. I prefer even more what User:82.5.106.137 did. Though I appreciate the general, perhaps retentive abhorrence of different formats in politics studies though personally am a great fan of latitude and even format diversity. People with stunning intellect remain quick to assign different weights, based on years and not coloured-in visual effect. Most readers don't. We have a 'soundbite' culture and lack of intense maths-english analysis done on first reading (these days) all of which means many people would benefit from a starker User:82.5.106.137 style breakdown of the service of MPs. Was it multi-term; was it one term? These things matter.
The question is simple. Does adding a line showing the re-election(s) give better due weight to the MP, which would be a shame to do without (some countries do this, some don't on their wikipedias). Date wise the lists certainly appear in most cases, due to long-servers and short-servers very lopsided right now. The counter-argument may run that it somehow makes MPs who have achieved re-election somehow seem more important, even if a heavy table line is used only if the MP changes name. Can that be overcome with the stressed table row separator used for every constituency article, then we have a sort of bolts-and-braces fairness both ways.
- Tagging editors
I draw the attention of the following editors to this discussion, please can you publicise it further if you can. @TSP:, @Bondegezou:, @Jdcooper:. @BitterGiant:, @Consgay:, @Chessrat:, @JDuggan:, @BrownHairedGirl:, @Galloglass:, @Timrollpickering:, @Warofdreams:, @JMPhillips92: I invite from everyone who wishes to consider this apparent slight bias (or finds none) a diversity of considered opinion.- Adam37 Talk 11:44, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Re-elections option
Elected/re-elected | Member[1] | Party | |
---|---|---|---|
1885 | style="background-color: Template:Liberal Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Octavius Vaughan Morgan | Liberal |
1892 | style="background-color: Template:Liberal-Labour (UK)/meta/color" | | John Burns | Liberal-Labour |
see Battersea North and Battersea South for 1918-1983 | |||
1983 | style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Alf Dubs | Labour |
1987 | rowspan=2 style="background-color: Template:Conservative Party (UK)/meta/color" | | John Bowis | Conservative |
1992 | |||
1997 | rowspan=3 style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Martin Linton | Labour |
2001 | |||
2005 | |||
2010 | rowspan=2 style="background-color: Template:Conservative Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Jane Ellison | Conservative |
2015 | |||
2017 | rowspan=2 style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Marsha De Cordova | Labour |
2019 |
Support. My support is I hope not overbearing - I will do all the work but gladly assign (delegate) counties at will. But I support.- Adam37 Talk 12:32, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Comment. Is there any reason why the first column is 'elected/re-elected' rather than 'election' (which is currently used in articles, is shorter, and thus doesn't extend the width of the column)? Also, is there any reason that this discussion hasn't been structured as a formal WP:RFC? Domeditrix (talk) 12:41, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
- It stresses the change being made and will make most people think twice before just reducing back to a state of misleadingness in future years/decades.- Adam37 Talk 13:34, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Support albeit I feel that an alternative option to reduce table size, that could be used for constituencies that have been around for a long time, would be to include multiple elections on the same row (did an example below, in which I also fixed the election links to avoid redirects). Chessrat (talk, contributions) 15:42, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
- Wonderful. That is far better! I today also spotted the early party to John Burns but in a rare moment of laziness (due to its age) am not today inclined to fix it in the article.- Adam37 Talk 16:28, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
- Object I HATE seeing this on constituency articles. It's cumbersome, it's too big, it's too long, and I know there is no page length but it causes too much scrolling for both laptop and mobile users. We know when there's a change in representation, that's when this section, and the detailed results below, make it clear. A long line of election years works in the US. It just looks goofy here. doktorb wordsdeeds 17:00, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
- Conditional oppose. I can see the merit of listing all the elections, but it risks getting very bulky. I would support this if there was some way of having the table initially list only the change elections, but be expandable to list all the elections. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)
Re-elections option, variant suggestion
Elected/re-elected | Member[1] | Party | |
---|---|---|---|
1885, 1886 | style="background-color: Template:Liberal Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Octavius Vaughan Morgan | Liberal |
1892 | style="background-color: Template:Independent Labour/meta/color" | | John Burns | Independent Labour |
1895, 1900, 1906, Jan 1910, Dec 1910 |
style="background-color: Template:Liberal-Labour (UK)/meta/color" | | Liberal-Labour | |
see Battersea North and Battersea South for 1918-1983 | |||
1983 | style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Alf Dubs | Labour |
1987, 1992 | style="background-color: Template:Conservative Party (UK)/meta/color" | | John Bowis | Conservative |
1997, 2001, 2005 | style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Martin Linton | Labour |
2010, 2015 | style="background-color: Template:Conservative Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Jane Ellison | Conservative |
2017, 2019 | style="background-color: Template:Labour Party (UK)/meta/color" | | Marsha De Cordova | Labour |
- Support This is clearer, concise, and logical. I will now be a little less brief about my objections to the first suggestion. doktorb wordsdeeds 16:58, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
- Support Both options are preferable to the current system, which is confusing from a reader's perspective and could be perceived as undue weight. I prefer this option as it is more concise, but I suppose it comes down to whether we value a more accurate representation of each MP's length in office over length. PinkPanda272 (talk/contribs) 18:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
- Conditional oppose. I can see the merit of listing all the elections, but it risks getting very bulky in cases where the same MP had long service. I would support this if there was some way of having the table initially list only the change elections, but be expandable to list all the elections.
For extreme examples, see Liverpool Scotland, where TP O'Connor won 13 successive elections, and Rushcliffe, where Ken Clarke also won 13 in a row. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)
Simple list option
Urban/rural district council elections
What are people's views on notability of these? While I appreciate they were at the same tier as modern district councils (for which we do have election articles), they were much smaller and I'm personally not convinced they are notable enough for articles. Maybe a single article on the RDCs/UDCs that includes all the election results should be enough?
Bringing this up as 1962 Orpington Urban District Council election has recently appeared. Cheers, Number 57 22:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC)