Talk:1874 Canadian federal election

RE: New Election Template(s)
I just noticed Jord's new contribution of the election-seats table, which parallels my newly-finished set on List of British Columbia general elections tables, using Template:LegSeats3 devised jointly by GroundZero and myself based on the layout of Template:Election FPTP and the similar adaption of Template:Election Pref for BC's 52/53 preferential-ballot elections. As GroundZero has noted it would be good if the colour columns on the LegSeats3 Template were narrower, like on the British election boxes, but I don't understand the formatting parameters in the wikitable language; if someone knows how to fix them please do.

I think the advantage on the Template system for election-results tables is that you can visually divide up and otherwise colorize ridings by government/opposition as well as by party, and add candidate details and other footnotes easily. Section-headings within the table could break it down by province easily enough, as in the political-party colours table page, and where relevant also by region - I was already pondering this region thing in BC in terms of any regional breakdown, like the table on the 1884 federal election page this discussion is attached to (and I like the graphics on that better than what's the equivalent in BC's too, BTW) but in the double-columns format; that way you'd also see who was opposition/government in each province - and, back to the point, also by region...BC is customarily broken down into the Island/Lower Mainland/Interior/North Coast, I'd imagine in Ontario you'd get Greater T, the Niagara Peninsula, Western Ontario, the Ottawa Valley, the Muskokas, the Nickel Belt, the Clay Belt and ??? I wouldn't know - just guessing; but even small provinces like Nova Scotia and Nfld and Labrador have noticeable voting regions; so subheadings in either table format used covering the geographic arrangements of the province would be good; it's even more critical within BC provincial elections, btw, historically anyway but that's a long story.....

Anyway, post is to suggest the use of templates as found through the List of British Columbia general elections (pick 1920, or 1952 - 'those were good years', or any of the 1872-1900 ones) and consider the visual effects/possibilities before you go on to doing more election tables the way you've been doing them; and I DO know how much work it is, either way. The nice thing in the template system is once you're in a riding you can copy-posted candidates and their parties from year to year, easily, in blocks, rearranging the order and adapting them as needed; and the entire layout you copy over entire from an election with the same number of seats in it; and typically half of those are incumbents, so you shuffle them around, and tidy up the names in the other ones; hit "Save page" and "voila!" it's built itself fairly easily. I would have liked to work a way to source it all using the succession-box system out of individual candidate or riding lists (still a possibility) but I think you'd have to have the full member-list in place, i.e. all articles on all members, before you could get the wikilanguage on that to work; from what little I understand of it so far...

I had a hard time with entering 35-79 seat legislature layouts/election wins; have fun with hundreds of MPs, you have my sympathy (and encouragement); and I think you'll find the Templates mentioned above might help make light work of it, relatively speaking.Skookum1 08:36, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I am confused, what I added was (to the right) Is that what you are talking about? (PS - it's format has been considerably changed since I added it) - Jord 16:14, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Not sure where it was now; it's not the table to the right. I tried to find table in question again and can't find it; it was a listing of elected candidates in a wikitable format; thought it was attached to 1874 but apparently not; will look around.  Thought it was your work but maybe read the history file wrong.Skookum1 23:16, 3 January 2006 (UTC)