Talk:List of United States Congresses

Untitled
by the way, if you want to do bios on congress people from history, check out http://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp Kingturtle 04:58, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Just looking over a few of these pages, I found numerous errors -- Tom Luken confused with Charlie Luken, Clarence Miller called Charles Miller, Delbert Latta called Daniel Latta, Edward Feighan misspelled as Fieghan, Dennis DeConcini called Douglas DeConcini. And I found these errors in a matter of five minutes. I can't begin to imagine the number of errors that exist throughout the project. What are the contributors using as their sources here? Is there any way of ensuring better quality here? Acsenray 20:35, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The years of Congressional sessions are usually listed as the year the session begins to the year of the election. That means, the 109th Congress should be listed as 2005-2006, not 2007. - sebmol 22:16, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * The Library of Congress, the Senate, and the House of Representatives web sites all refer to Congresses with numerals (the 103rd Congress, the 83rd Congress) rather than words (one-hundred-first). Is the word format a Wiki standard? OtherDave 23:45, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

What do you guys think of adding a infobox ala what the individual presidents have on their articles. You could put on the right hand side the main leadership for that congressional session in a qucik and easy to find method. Cmdrbond 05:22, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Looking for a table showing parties in power
I could probably create a basic HTML table showing which parties were in power in Congress, and this seems to be the most appropriate article to add it to. Is there demand for this kind of information?

Chadlupkes 00:59, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Session dates
This would be a good article in which to include session dates.—Markles 13:07, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Columnar header style

 * - Idiomatic American English expression pairs temporal expressions as 'Start and Finish', 'Begin and End', 'Convene and Adjourn'.
 * - They may be styled as Started - Finished, Begin date - End date.
 * - The style of the columnar data, "March 4, 1789" is widely recognized as a date, no explanatory 'date' is required for the general reader.
 * - I propose Convened and Adjourned be substituted for 'Begin date' and 'Adjourn date'. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:35, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Requested move 18 November 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: No Consensus - The main arguments cited for moving is consistency, WP:NCCAPS, MOS:CAPS. The main argument against moving is the potential scope-change, reduced conciseness, and potential vagueness of the proposed title, especially given the official name. Both in numerical terms and in terms of weight of the argument, this appears to be a deadlock with no clear consensus in favour of moving. A further re-list, given that this has already be re-listed three times and !voting is moving against the proposed move, and has slowed with only one !vote (an oppose) cast since the last re-list, appears unnecessary. (non-admin closure) FOARP (talk) 21:36, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

– The United States Congress and its various meetings (e.g. 116th United States Congress) are proper nouns and should remain capitalized. However, I'm not sure that's the case when referring to multiple meetings of Congress in plural form. "Congress" can be used as a common noun just like "parliament" can be.
 * List of United States Congresses → List of congresses of the United States
 * Party divisions of United States Congresses → Party divisions of congresses of the United States (updated proposed changes based on consensus that has formed in the discussion)

If these articles are moved, it would bring them in line with other articles like:
 * List of parliaments of the United Kingdom
 * List of parliaments of Scotland
 * List of parliaments of England
 * List of parliaments of Ireland
 * List of Canadian federal parliaments, which capitalizes when referring to a specific meeting (e.g. 44th Canadian Parliament) Woko Sapien (talk) 21:35, 18 November 2021 (UTC) — Relisting. Spekkios (talk) 23:33, 25 November 2021 (UTC) — Relisting. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 17:24, 3 December 2021 (UTC)  — Relisting. FOARP (talk) 08:42, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

If this move is agreed to, then Category:United States Congresses and Template:United States Congresses should follow suit as well. --Woko Sapien (talk) 21:40, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose - as it's the United States Congress. -- GoodDay (talk) 00:03, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Which would remain unchanged, as it refers solely to the institution. What I'm talking about is when the word is being used synonymously with "meetings" (plural). For instance, Senator Smith served in three United States congresses. Senator Smith has only served in one institution (the United States Congress), but has served in three meetings thereof. --Woko Sapien (talk) 17:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Support: proper names are not usually pluralised but if they are pluralised, they are not then singularised. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:05, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * To a matter of scope (as raised below), it is a mater that can and should be addressed by hat notes regardless of the ultimate result here. Anybody not familiar will not recognise the limitations of the present "scope".  This probably applies to most of the non-US En WP and a good part that is. But, the scope of an article is largely defined by the lead - even if it is not quite what you expect (with hat-notes we would find there is more than we might expect from any of the proposed titles).  There is no issue with WP:PRECISION.  There are no actual conflicts in WP article titles that require further disambiguation.  Please don't view this decision as "WP knows best" and "We know better".  How bests do we serve readers that know nothing of the subject?  Subtle distinctions in capitalisation (and what editors think these man to readers) really don't serve anybody. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:48, 27 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Suggest List of congresses of the United States or List of congresses of the United States Congress would be clearer/less objectionable. Category and template can use short names as proposed. Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 05:45, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Agree - List of congresses of the United States: more consistent with the examples given. While not as brief, it is IMO more natural - so reasonable within WP:AT. Also unambiguously not a "proper noun" usage. Cinderella157 (talk) 06:20, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * ,, I've added your suggestion to my proposal.--Woko Sapien (talk) 15:45, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Agree - List of congresses of the United States: Much more natural while avoiding the strange combination of a capital letter with a plural. —&#8288;&#8202;&#8288;BarrelProof (talk) 16:11, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Support consistent with the other article mentioned.--67.70.100.169 (talk) 06:03, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose as proposed - this would be a scope change and topics like Second Continental Congress would have to be added. List of congresses of the United States Congress is wordier but unobjectionable. User:力 (powera,  π,  ν ) 20:03, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If your objection is over the fact that post-1776 United States congresses would also include the Second Continental Congress and the Congress of the Confederation, they can easily be added to the article in some form or another.--Woko Sapien (talk) 20:44, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * See the hatnote I added here --Woko Sapien (talk) 21:04, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That works. List of congresses of the United States is now fine; the Confederate States Congress was not "of the United States" and neither is a high school's Model Congress.  Still opposed to "United States congresses" constructions. User:力 (powera,  π,  ν ) 21:10, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Added another alternative name proposal that uses the "congresses of the United States" construction. The category and template could be reconstructed that way too.--Woko Sapien (talk) 22:11, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Support per WP:NCCAPS, MOS:CAPS, WP:CONSISTENT.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:12, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment I've updated the proposed change to reflect the consensus that has since formed here. --Woko Sapien (talk) 22:52, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This is not a list of generic congresses, but rather specific instances of the United States Congress which is capitalized.  More generally, generalizing the scope doesn't make sense here anyway - readers want a list of the capitalized Congress specifically.  SnowFire (talk) 04:55, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Support - as a generic plural of a singular (sometimes) proper name. Primergrey (talk) 05:28, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. It is less concise.  The extra "of the" adds nothing and makes the article title disappear from the eye. "List of United States Congresses" is direct, concise and precise, and jumps at the eye. Switching it around and adding an extra "of the" in middle means I have to pause and carefully read the entire sentence to make sure that's the article I'm looking for. There's no gain and a bit of a loss to readers. Don't really see the point. Walrasiad (talk) 11:11, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Support – plural makes it not a proper name. Dicklyon (talk) 06:54, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose, and the rational for the move rests on a fallacious premise. As a parallel example, let's say we have a list of people with the names Tom, Dick, and Harry; do you all contend that the list would correctly be called "List of toms, dicks, and harrys" instead of "List of Toms, Dicks, and Harrys"? Please note, every "Congress" on this list is formally named: e.g., the First Congress of the Unites States, the 102nd Congress... Etc. Those are the official names of each congress, therefore the "Congress" in "List of United States Congresses" IS in reference to a proper name. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:C809:C011:7B50:20BB (talk) 22:59, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem with this argument is that given names must be capitalized because they are always proper nouns. The word "congress" however can be both a proper and common noun. My point is that when it is plural, it is arguably being used as a common noun.--Woko Sapien (talk) 18:38, 6 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Oppose per SnowFire.  ~Junedude433 (talk)  03:57, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Because the U.S. is not a unitary government but a federal one, lowercase "congresses" can refer to state legislatures, so the proposed titles would not reflect accurate scope. Multiple sessions of Congress are called just that: sessions of Congress. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 02:24, 14 December 2021 (UTC)


 * How is the US substantially different from other national legislatures which are not unitary (eg Canada and the UK) where we use lowercase for lists of their national legislatures? This is WP:EN, not WP:US.  How is the US national legislature (yes, it is a bicarmeral system but so are many others) so special or distinct that it should be treated differently from other similar national legislatures?  For a reader unfamiliar with the subject, how does capitalising "Congress" sufficiently and unambiguously define the scope?  It doesn't.  It relies on the lead to define the scope of the article.  How then, does changing the capitalisation of the title actually change the scope of the article?  Where is there a conflict in naming with other "actual" articles that would require such a distinction in the article title?  I don't see it, but if so, are we serving our readers well by relying on such a subtle distinction?  Given that accessibility is a matter of policy, how are those relying on text readers well served by such a minor distinction? Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 11:52, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Ping Cinderella157 (talk) 09:39, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Cinderella157, for weighing in.
 * Closer, I leave the weighing of my oppose rationale, the above reply, and the other !votes in your hands. Thank you for your patience, time, and diligence, and I wish everyone a safe and restful year-end. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 22:52, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Oppose per reasons brought forth in this interesting discussion. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:48, 17 December 2021 (UTC)