Talk:2021 Dublin Bay South by-election

Article Format
I'm just looking at the format of UK by-election pages such as 2019 Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, 2019 Peterborough by-election, 2019 Newport West by-election, 2018 Lewisham East by-election, and 2018 West Tyrone by-election and see that they're much more expansive than most Irish ones. Presumably, a lot of that would be down to the fact they have much more editors to draw upon. At any rate, they have a fairly consistent format between each one, one that includes background and candidate selection sections. So I think, given the format used there, it wouldn't be unusual for Irish by-election pages to use a similar format. I understand that because Ireland has a much more politically varied system than the UK that going into too much detail about things such as party selections could lead to too much sprawl, however, I don't think it has to be between an absolute of no party selection discussion or too much party selection discussion. I think it's possible to create a happy medium by being concise. CeltBrowne (talk) 13:21, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm happy with that approach. Spleodrach (talk) 19:35, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I have removed the 2020 general election result, and it is not standard for other Irish by-election articles, and the 2020 result in on the main constituency page. Also, unlike the UK, the previous result is not a valid comparison, as the general election is a multi seat election, and the by-election is a single seat one. Spleodrach (talk) 08:17, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Shouldn’t the table of candidates be as per alphabetical surname order, as per current electoral law, as opposed to alphabetical by candidate surname?Khavakoz (talk) 23:11, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Davos
Deirdre Conroy's own blog posts describe her ski trip to Davos in 2013, and is referred to in the "On the Ditch" post. Removing this from the post removes key context. Khavakoz (talk) 20:55, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Per WP:SYNTHESIS, I have removed it. She was not attending the World Economic Forum. Spleodrach (talk) 22:45, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * WP:Synth does not apply, Davos is known as a high end ski resort apart from the Forum. Undo Khavakoz (talk) 23:05, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * There is no consensus to include this. Undo. Spleodrach (talk) 23:15, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * No consensus has been sought, material clearly refers to posts by candidate on her blog, and notes reporting in newspapers. Undo Khavakoz (talk) 23:18, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Stop edit warring or you will be banned. Spleodrach (talk) 23:18, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * You are the one edit warring in violation of WP:3RR. Throwing spurious allegations and references to WP: and editorialising re relevance to campaign. The information is as per discussion in the blogs, on media coverage and in social media.Khavakoz (talk) 23:23, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @Khavakoz@Spleodrach I've replaced the citation for the Davos part. As On The Ditch has been recognised as being reliable for at least this particular article, and because On The Ditch refers to the Davos post, I've used that as the citation instead. In turn I've removed the citation that goes to the blog, which would be original research if no media outlet or political commentator referred to it.
 * For the removal of the entire section (edit summary: "rm - the relevance of 8 years old blog posts to a 2021 campaign is not clear") this has received enough media attention to form a key part of the campaign, with mentions in The Irish Independent, The Irish Examiner, The Irish Times, etc. As that media coverage has tied those comments to this 2021 campaign, the 8 year old blog posts are therefore relevant to the Conroy campaign. Uses x (talk • contribs) 11:24, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I have removed the ontheditch reference, as it is a blog, and so not allowed per WP:RS. I have removed the reference to the economic downturn as the is not referenced and also appears to be untrue. I have added info about another skiing trip in 2015. Also, it appear the Conroy worked as a travel writer for a number of years, so going on holidys was actually her job.
 * This is becoming ridiculous. Your edit here is, again, a clear violation of WP:3RR and your continual new excuses for deleting this information give all the appearance of Socking. WP:RS clearly does not apply as the information presented in that "blog" is clearly referenced to the original material and is supported by the additional links presented. The ski-trip to Davos which really grinds your particular gears predates Conroy's employment by Independent News & Media (2015). Please stop amending this article to suit your own political ends. Khavakoz (talk) 20:42, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Added a EW to Spleodrach's talk page on this basisKhavakoz (talk) 21:07, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I've left  about this on your talk page. It's best to discuss this there as this discussion is getting off topic. Uses x (talk • contribs) 23:11, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
 * @Khavakoz: socking? Are you sure you actually know what that term means? First of all, that's a pretty major allegation to make against an editor, not least given it appeared to only be Spleodrach reverting your changes (and later Uses x, but this was after you'd made your allegation), but in general I can't see any appearance of "socking" going on here with one singular editor (now two) reverting your changes. Anyway, if you're insinuating that Spleodrach somehow has some other account he's using (evidently not to revert your changes), take it to WP:SPI rather than making unfounded allegations on the talk page. ser! (chat to me - see my edits) 11:12, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Socking? Does Khavakoz even know what this term means? Also, WP:RS clearly applies to all blogs. Thankfully, the issues have been resolved now. Spleodrach (talk) 18:50, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

How should the infobox be handled between now and the results?
So I'm looking at 2019 Dublin Fingal by-election for comparison and a month before the by-election was held, I can see from the history section that the infobox began listing all the confirmed candidates in alphabetical order and included their images where available. However, Template:Infobox election seems to only be able to display up to 9 candidates at a time, and so far there are 12 candidates. Thus, should we use Template:Infobox election and display the most probable candidates, or do we have to switch to using something like Template:Infobox legislative election, or is there some other way of displaying the candidates in an infobox that can be done? CeltBrowne (talk) 01:38, 16 June 2021 (UTC)


 * @CeltBrowne The precedent seems to be to just list the top 9 candidates in the infobox election template, and leave the minor candidates for the long table of results. This is done in the 2019 Cork North-Central by-election, 2019 Dublin Fingal by-election, etc. I replied saying the infobox legislative election might've worked (so you might have received a ping), but looking at it I don't think it's designed for this kind of thing. Uses x (leave me a message) 13:25, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
 * To clarify, as I misread: this should only be done after the election is over. I agree that the candidates don't need to be listed in the infobox at the moment as that'd be a breach of NPOV. Uses x (leave me a message) 13:39, 16 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Or we can leave the infobox as-is, right now? If it's not capable of displaying all of the declared candidates, then why fudge a solution that'd be a breach of NPOV?  All of the declared candidates are listed right there in the article body, so there's really not much to be gained by also including (some of) them in an infobox. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 13:33, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
 * There's nothing wrong with that and if that's the way we go, that's cool with me. However, is it possible to take the current "confirmed candidates" infobox and merge it with the infobox containing the map at the top of the article? So that all the "quick look" info is in one place? CeltBrowne (talk) 20:43, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Electorate listing
I was looking at the dublin city returning officer website and in the "Bye-Election Press Release" it says the electorate for this constituency is 72,302. Should this be listed somewhere on the article? Thenoobgaming (talk) 20:46, 4 July 2021 (UTC)


 * The electorate is generally included when the count starts, and we get the total poll, valid votes, quota, etc. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 21:37, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Removal of duplicate citations
This really shouldn't have been a problem, but I've had a contribution reverted in which I:

Removed one opinion piece that makes a passing mention of the relevant text while the other article gives a comprehensive overview of the information, and another which has three mere relevant sentences stating that the party is "expected to select" the candidate while the other citation is a comprehensive overview of when she was selected.

This is to merely back up information about the candidate selection, which is repeated in near every article on the page.

I'm interested if any uninvolved editor agrees with this. I've made a comment on the user's talk page to inform them of this. Regards, Uses x (leave me a message) 20:36, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
 * You post refers to a disagreement with me, so you should have pinged me. It would also have been have been much more helpful to link the diff(s), so that editors can make their own assessment of the edits, rather than than relying only only your side of the story.
 * As just one example, your flurry of edits removing refs twice removed the ref to the Miriam Lord article which contained a quote from Mannix Flynn, which i added here.
 * As discussed on my talk, this topic is still fresh, and the article is under development. Many of the refs cited are to sources which could be used to improve the article; but removing them because of alleged "redundancy"  impedes that development.
 * When the topic is no longer actively developing, and editors have had more time to develop it, then it would be helpful to review the refs for possible redundancy. But at this stage, the removals actively undermine the development of the article.  It is much more work to re-add refs than to remove them, so there should be no rush to removal. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:32, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
 * @BrownHairedGirl I'd rather deal with it now.
 * "He said that he would be throwing the kitchen" at his campaign." is for the campaign section, not the statements of who's running. That's not enough info to create a section for him, so we don't need that, nor its citation as it has no useful information. Irish Times opinion piece gone.
 * I'll leave this for now because it doesn't add warrentless and undue text in a prominent to advertise a candidate like the above did, but the Independent article talking about Durcan being "expected" to be selected (i.e. outdated, as I've repeated multiple times) has its info covered in near every single citation. I replaced it with an in-depth Irish Times article on top of the Examiner article that's already in the article, and you reverted that. Why?
 * Regards, Uses x (leave me a message) 22:56, 8 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Please do not remove references from the article. We are under no time pressure. Some of the references you removed may well need to be re-added, and the article is still developing. A few days after the result has been announced, we can absolutely remove/consolidate references, but until then, there's no benefit to removal. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 23:09, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
 * @Bastun Could you take a look at the addition of the campaign slogan (2nd paragraph), and remove or move it if it's out of place? Uses x (leave me a message) 23:13, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Image of James Geoghegan
The article has no image of Fine Gael candidate James Geoghegan. Since he was runner-up, that's an unfortunate gap.

I have asked at WP:Media copyright questions whether we can use the image on the DCC website at https://councilmeetings.dublincity.ie/mgUserInfo.aspx?UID=843. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 16:17, 11 July 2021 (UTC)


 * In parallel, I'm speaking to someone on Flickr who attended the count centre and took many high-quality images while there, including some of Geoghegan and Conroy. They've provisionally agreed to share some of those photos, I'm walking them through the final section of the deal now, so hopefully, that avenue bears fruit. I had actually e-mailed Fine Gael, who run an official Fine Gael Flickr account, earlier in the campaign about releasing some photos under Creative Commons licenses and at first, they seemed open to it, yet never committed to it in the end. I also have previously made contact with Labour, who also run an official Flickr account, and I think explaining that we can only use images under something like a CC BY 2.0 license is what prompted them to release the image we have now of Bacik under the correct license, which they don't normally do. CeltBrowne (talk) 17:09, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * that's great work. I hope it bears fruit.
 * I had actually drafted most of an email to Geoghegan asking him to upload a photo, but when I ran through the image upload request thing for those without autoconfirmed accounts, it still all seemed too complex to put someone through.
 * For about 12 years i have intended to try to persuade all the parties in the Oireachtas to systematically release images that Wikipedia can use, but every time I have concluded that the process is too hasslesome. Your approach of going via Flickr seems much better, since the only issue then remaining is the licence type. I find it sad that the parties have not copped on to how it is very much in their interest to have good quality photos of their people freely-available, and how some modest effort on the part of their central comms team could make it happen.  It's not in anyone's interest for their elected reps and candidates to be described here with no photo or with some blurry, long-range, poorly-framed shot that was the best someone could do at a public event.
 * Meanwhile, fingers crossed that your contact at the count will be kind enough to share some of their work. Extra images would really brighten up the article, and give more of a feel to the solid written description we have created. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 19:48, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * It's honest to God like pulling teeth trying to get the Irish political parties to understand flickr. After a number of e-mails, I actually rang the person in the Labour Party that runs their press and social media. I explained that we can only use photos that are both commercially available and that we can alter (and I explained the most common alteration we make are crops). Labour already allows the photos they put to be used commercially (normally the commercial aspect is the hardest thing to conceive people of), so I thought convincing them to drop the NoDerivatives would be simple. Not at all. God forbid someone were to take the photo and alter it. God forbid someone were to make a meme out of one of their photos (which can and will happen whether or not the images is licensed for that). God forbid a photo featuring someone outside the parliamentary party was given away. In their heads, if someone uses a photo they created in a way they don't like, they think they'll be able to take them to court for breaking the "NoDerivatives" rule. Not only would that be insanely expensive, that's not how you handle something like that. In that situation you take someone to court for something like slander, not for a minor copyright breach. I basically couldn't get through to them at the time, although I'm almost certain that the person who uploaded the new image of Bacik the week of the vote was someone from the Labour party itself and they finally realised what it takes to get their images onto Wikipedia.
 * This is all in complete contrast to Sinn Féin, who upload every single photo on their flickr account as CC BY SA 2.0. And I've pointed that fact out to all the other parties I've spoken to, but they take no heed. I don't want to pat SF too much on the back for this, but the fact they understand things like this is what journalists mean when they say that SF's social media game is miles ahead of all the rest. CeltBrowne (talk) 20:48, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * wow, that's very sad. Whether or not anyone supports any of the parties concerned, that sort of approach is bad news, because it impedes all sorts of new media coverage (not just Wikipedia).
 * You are right that copyright isn't a good grounds to sue for nasty memes, although it may be a theoretically useful basis for a takedown request on social media sites. But any such action (whether legal or administrative) risks creating a Streisand effect which both boosts the impact of the meme and makes the complainant look like a bully who can't take the heat.  In practice, it's an unusable power.
 * So the only real effect of that sort of policy is to keep their images off responsible websites like Wikipedia, while in practice doing nothing to stop the creation and distribution of memes because meme-makers tend not to care about copyright anyway, and usually welcome the notoriety of being pursued.
 * It seems that the comms units of the other parties may be run by older people who don't understand social media and are thinking they can still exercise the sort of control that was possible in the pre-digital era. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 22:55, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
 * You are right that copyright isn't a good grounds to sue for nasty memes, although it may be a theoretically useful basis for a takedown request on social media sites. But any such action (whether legal or administrative) risks creating a Streisand effect which both boosts the impact of the meme and makes the complainant look like a bully who can't take the heat.  In practice, it's an unusable power.
 * So the only real effect of that sort of policy is to keep their images off responsible websites like Wikipedia, while in practice doing nothing to stop the creation and distribution of memes because meme-makers tend not to care about copyright anyway, and usually welcome the notoriety of being pursued.
 * It seems that the comms units of the other parties may be run by older people who don't understand social media and are thinking they can still exercise the sort of control that was possible in the pre-digital era. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 22:55, 11 July 2021 (UTC)


 * - Images used on Wikipedia and on the Wikimedia commons must be images that have been officially released to the public. This means they must be hosted on a website where it explicitly states something to the effect of "this image is not under copyright". The most common and easiest way for political parties to release images to the public (and by extension, Wikipedia), is to run an official Flickr account, and use Flickr's licensing system to mark the image/photo as being available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license. That, or the political party can add a "images on this website are released under a creative commons CC BY SA 2.0 license" notice on their official website. If you like to see an image/photo of Bridget Purcell used in this article, I would suggest you encourage People before Profit to start their own Flickr account and upload their photos properly licensed, or add a CC BY SA 2.0 notice to their website. Alternatively, if you were to take a photo of Bridget yourself at some point, you yourself as the creator of that image could release that to the public under whichever license you like. CeltBrowne (talk) 00:55, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Did you know nomination
this hook is included in Template:Did you know/Queue/5, which will be on the front page at 00:00, 14 January 2022 (UTC), where it will remain for 12 hours.
 * Headsup

That is likely to trigger some edits, so I think we should be alert tomorrow to check whether any such edits are constructive. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 14:02, 13 January 2022 (UTC)