Template talk:Australian Senators

Party colours
Could we perhaps do this template without the colours/parties? It looks very "busy" and hard to comprehend. -- Barrylb 22:59, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

It is busy, but one of the the points was to visually show the party distribution by state. I'm not sure how to do this without colours. I'll try making the colurs paler and see what people think. The 8 transcluded subpages which contain the colours are:
 * Template:Australian Senators/alp
 * Template:Australian Senators/dem
 * Template:Australian Senators/fam
 * Template:Australian Senators/grn
 * Template:Australian Senators/lib
 * Template:Australian Senators/clp
 * Template:Australian Senators/nat
 * Template:Australian Senators/nli

Moondyne ≡ talk 03:58, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It doesn't look busy as such now, but with the pale colours it looks very hard to try and work out which party is meant to be which if you didn't already know - the shades are too similar. I think it might be easier to either drop the party colours altogether, or instead tack (Lib) (ALP) (Dem) etc on the end of the person's name, as AFAIK they do with the US. I also think it might be better to shrink the text down a size, to prevent the problems this table has with names going over lines Rebecca 04:20, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The American one is Current U.S. Senators, and they've had a bet both ways. I'll give that a go. -- Moondyne &equiv; talk 05:49, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * They don't have the issue of the minor parties, however, and I think that's where the colour problems lie here. Rebecca 06:03, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

This is wrong. There are more than 3 Victorian ALP Senators. Someone has mixed something up. Xtra 08:47, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * There's 4 - sorry, I had Steve Conroy wrong. It's fixed now. -- Moondyne &equiv; talk 09:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The colour subtemplates
The coloured sub templates are nice! Great idea -- it's dramatically improved. I updated them so they take a parameter instead -- otherwise you have to remember to do a closing span tag and it's unintuitive.

There is still a little problem though -- it's really hard to see the current politician bolded when you're on a politician's article. I wonder if there's a way to make the colours still helpful but less distracting and/or increase the text size without making it more difficult to follow? &mdash; Донама 10:03, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Donama, thanks for that - much better setup now. Only "font-size:small" and larger font sizes show as bold. "font-size:x-small" and "font-size:xx-small" don't change appearance if bolded. And "small" is going to be too big. I don't see the lack of bolding as a big deal. -- Moondyne &equiv; talk 13:39, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Colours
These are still too light. I can't tell one party from the other. Perhaps a coloured box next to each person would be better? (JROBBO 10:24, 15 May 2006 (UTC))

The point
What is the point of the template when categories do the job cleaner and with less clutter? Dysprosia 05:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * That's a good point.--cj | talk 17:36, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps better with a hide/show button? -- Moondyne &equiv; talk 15:44, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Last edit on 7/2/2007
I'm not sure what the issue was with the previous revision, the current revision for me at least now has quite a large space to the right of the template and looks completely off balance. Timeshift 14:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, I reverted my last edit back to cj's version dated 2 Feb. For me it was wrapping some of the longer names onto 2 lines.  But no problems, I can live with that, as what you saw sounds worse. &mdash;Moondyne 14:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * What screen size and res are you on? Timeshift 14:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * 1024x768 - 17". Using Firefox (IE7 appears the same). &mdash;Moondyne 14:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * What does Template:Politics of Australia look like to you on the parliamentary and election pages? Timeshift 14:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * It looks fine - 100% of available screen width, in both the template page and on one of the pages which includes it as a transclusion. &mdash;Moondyne 14:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Some thoughts
I was looking at the SA upper house candidates, which is based on this one as it turns out, and noticed some major usability issues - I'll reproduce them here for wider discussion.


 * 1) The font is almost unreadable on a smaller monitor. I use 1280x960 on a 19" monitor and even I'm having difficulties. The "references-small" size, which is a relative size of 90% from normal if done manually, would seem adequate for the purpose. I note that Template:Politics of Australia already uses this size.
 * 2) Secondly, there is no difference, or no perceptible difference, between the background colours of the respective parties, although I can see from reading the source code there should be one (my suggestion would be to have a much darker coloured box to the left, or even a font colouring, representing the party). If this can't practically be achieved, I would suggest removing the feature entirely as it would then be mere template bloat.

(Edit: On looking VERY carefully I can sort of make out a difference between the Green/Dem and other ones. But that took around 15 seconds to identify.)

It's important to remember that many Wikipedians are sight impaired and may not have access to the most modern or reliable computer equipment, so usability issues are very important. Orderinchaos 12:45, 17 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Fair comments OIC. This template was based on the idea from Current U.S. Senators, but after reviewing yours and others comments on this page, I get the impression that no-one is overly exited by it being in every senators article.  It seemed to me to be a good idea at the time, but unless you or someone can improve it per your comments of its shortcomings, perhaps it should be deleted.  I would not stand in the way of that. &mdash;Moondyne 15:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Uncollapse
Is there a way to |state =  this template? Timeshift 18:10, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I hope not. Large templates should stay collapsed until I want to open them. Iorek 06:00, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
 * During the election I think it needs to be open for the 2007 election page. Timeshift 06:28, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Not everyone has 1280x960, which is why we have things this way. Orderinchaos 09:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Like this: Donama (talk) 01:18, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Latest updates - all looks good except for Lambie's colour - too dark!
Template:Australian Senators is looking good except for Lambie's background colour, it is clearly the odd one out, due to a much darker shade of colour than the other 75 Senators. On many screens it would be too hard to read the text with that dark shade of colour! Can it be lightened up a bit please? Timeshift (talk) 02:40, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Also, Members of the Australian Senate, 2016–2019 needs significant updating. Timeshift (talk) 02:53, 4 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Being the one responsible for the dark colour (eyedropped and lightened slightly already from her website), I tried to lighten it a bit more. I chose hex #ffbb77 (orange with 100% red, 73% green, 47% blue). There doesn't seem to be a guideline or convention for how one ought to choose a colour, so hopefully it will be okay. It is pretty close to that of Xenophon Team (100% R, 82% G, 53% B), and the Country Lib party. Feel free to tweak further. Donama (talk) 00:34, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Hard to read by party / view by voting blocs?
This template is really useful but I haven't seen a really nice way of having the senators presented as party/blocs. For what it's worth I drafted something here: User:Donama/Australian Senators by party. Any thoughts? Donama (talk) 01:52, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
 * My main thought is that it is bloody enormous. I feel like it is too much to try to sort by both party and state in the same template. If we were to change the format (I'm not convinced it's necessary), my preference would be to remove any and all colours not separate out by state (could be done in brackets perhaps). Frickeg (talk) 10:56, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi again, I'm interested in this template being useful to visualise the likely voting blocs once again. Do you think it (or something like it) would be better than the current breakdown by state? Thanks Donama (talk) 05:03, 27 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I like this! Can we lose the colours though? I've never liked them in this template and no other equivalent Australian template uses them. I also wonder if we could do something with the Coalition like Template:Queensland Representatives, since I don't much like the Nats being merged in with the Liberals. Frickeg (talk) 07:38, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The colours were previously there to help show party allegiances when they were arranged by state. Now arranged by voting bloc I think the colours are unnecessary but I don't hate them. How do you like the example below? Donama (talk) 22:41, 2 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I think this looks great. The only change I would make would be a little footnote (asterisk) next to Liberal and National to make it clear we're including LNP (I think this is the right call, but we need to note it); it may be worth including CLP in that but that could go either way. I don't love the Bold (brackets) formatting but can't think of anything better.


 * I also think it may potentially be worth combining our current seven Reps templates into a single one along these lines. Might need some wider discussion for that one though. Frickeg (talk) 07:50, 3 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Someone altered the main template to reflect that CLP is also part of the federal Nationals so a separate CLP row may be eliminated. Also the bold state links can go to the state-level parties which are responsible for the group tickets and choosing appointed replacements. Donama (talk) 23:35, 3 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I hope you don't mind, but I added my suggested notes to the above, and added Lib/Nat subtotals. I also removed the bit about the majority, which is not really the role of this template. What do you think? I really like linking the state parties from the state abbreviations. Frickeg (talk) 09:36, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm happy for the above to go live with some minor changes that can be dealt with after moving. Anyone else? Donama (talk) 02:44, 17 July 2019 (UTC)