User talk:Crooked cottage

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Constituency results
Hey :) Just spotted your edits in my watchlist, always nice to see a new helping hand around here for election results, good to see you on board. There's a busy year ahead....doktorb wordsdeeds 18:35, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Table cells
Per my note in the edit summary, your use of style="background-color:" is redundant on a cell which needs no background-color. The simplest solution to aligning the cells is just to leave a blank cell.

BTW, sorry for not replying to your msg on my talk. It's great that you are getting to work on these constituency articles, and I echo doktorb's welcome.

I don't now if you are aware of it, but there is a WikiProject dealing with these constituencies: WP:UKPC. The project's talkpage (WT:UKPC) is a good place to raise any issues which arise in the course of your work.

Good luck! -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:59, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for those links, and the time-saving recommendation (but I copied what I did from somewhere :)). I'll go with what you are recommending for now and see if anyone complains. Crooked cottage (talk) 17:11, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Minus signs
Hi again :)

Another small thing: typographically, a minus sign is not same as a dash. In election results tables, we try to use a minus sign to show a fall in a number, rather than a dash. The minus sign can be entered as the html entity, or less commonly by the actual character −

In this edit you replaced a few minus signs with dashes, which I have now fixed. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:56, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, understood, will amend my VB auto-generation code. Crooked cottage (talk) 23:04, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Wansdyke (UK Parliament constituency)
Thanks for your edits to Wansdyke (UK Parliament constituency). I note that you have added a separate section "History" which is currently blank except for an "expand" tag. What sort of thing would you expect to see in it which is not already in the boundaries section? I would suggest not creating new blank sub headings until there is something to go in it & will remove it - please add it back if you have significant content to go in there.&mdash; Rod talk 11:58, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this. Many of the pages have History sections as well as Boundaries: for instance see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northavon_(UK_Parliament_constituency) . I'm merely trying to set up a standard for the pages (have a look through the edits I've done in the past few weeks at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Crooked_cottage if you haven't already), then I'll go back and edit them if someone hasn't been there first. I'll sort out Wansdyke as a starting point.
 * I can see your point, and if I was starting from scratch I wouldn't create separate sections for history and boundaries. However, if I attempted to merge these I'm bound to upset people. So what I'll do is update the Wansdyke page as you request, but I would like to carry on adding in the new sections for expansion. If I don't approach it this way, it will take me months to get anywhere close to a standard across the pages. Is this a reasonable approach? Crooked cottage (talk) 18:02, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I am all in favour of expanding articles, and I am full of admiration for the work Crooked cottage has done tidying up and standardising constituency articles. However, blank sections don't help readers: they are just un-needed clutter. I am guilty of adding some of them myself in the past, to constituency articles, but it was a bad idea. The section headings can be added quite asily when there is some content to put in them, and sometimes they will start off with very little content ... but when there's zero content, they aren't needed. (Please don't take this as a reproach: I fear that you have in good faith been following my bad example, so if anyone needs a trip to the naughty corner, it's me).
 * As to having separate history and boundaries sections, I'm pretty sure that's a convention agreed at WP:UKPC. When there is some content :) -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:40, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, point taken. I can't disagree. No more reversions please: I'll sort it out - in time. In the meantime I'll add the sections as I go. I'm quite happy acting to others' priorities. Crooked cottage (talk) 21:15, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I've updated Wansdyke now. Basically where I am starting is that the History section should contain when the constituency existed (or was created for one which still exists), which party held the seat, any famous MPs and anything else interesting about the constituency (famous by-elections, declaring early, etc.).
 * I hadn't spotted this before, but please do not remove the dates from the lead. Fine to expand on that in the history section, but ids basic info which belongs in the lead. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:03, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Reflist
Great work fixing the rayment ref in Monmouth by-election, 1945 to use the newer template, but not such a good idea to remove the only inline ref. The article needs more footnotes, not fewer.

Also, even if there is no footnote, it's a not a good idea to remove. It does no harm if unused, and when an inline ref is added it's handier to have it ready than to have make a separate edit to add it. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:58, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I'm tired having spent a few hours wondering quite why people are telling me about the history of places rather than anything psephological. Some of those four Monmouth by-election articles had duplicate References paragraphs which is why I've made the mistake. I hadn't intended to delete the . I'll put this back the way I intended. I'll just have to accept that I can't standardise the by-elections for now. Incidentally I've about 270  references to sort out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Crooked cottage (talk • contribs) 03:11, 5 January 2011
 * Per WP:LEAD, the lead should summarise the key points of the article. AFAICS, that begins with more or less a subset of the the data in the info box: how many MPs, where was it, when did it exist ... and maybe follows with a brief summary of the psephology.
 * Great work too on the rayment templates. Your prolific workrate is mighty impressive, and a great joy to see after so many of these articles have languished for so long. Sorry if I only ever seem to pop up with an objection; that's just because the overwhelming majority of what you do is great, so I just enjoy seeing it flying past on my watchlist, and only interject if I think there's maybe a little glitch.
 * On the by-elections, I think it's best to accept that there are many difft ways of telling the story, and not try to standardise them too much. Quite a lot of them have rather poor leads which don't explain the context to a general reader, but most such articles need a lot of expansion anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much about them for now. If you do want to get stuck in, it might be a good idea to start a discussion at WT:UKPC on what format to go for.
 * Good luck! - Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:34, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I really appreciate your help. I'll leave the by-elections (other than to sort Rayment more or less) for now. I really want to get to the point where everything 1992 and after is in place, then I can work out where to go next.Crooked cottage (talk) 03:46, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's great.
 * One thing to throw into the mix as a possibility: the election templates. There was some lot of concern at WP:UKPC about the sheer visual bulkiness of the election box templates, so I developed a more compact alternative called (yes, wait for it!) compact election box. You can see it in use in several places, e.g. Old&Sad, St Albans, Fulham West.
 * Converting existing election box templates is slow and tedious, but for any constituencies where are therea e none so far it's probably better to start with the compact format rather than having to convert later.
 * Hope this helps! -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:55, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I've noticed. I am quite happy with going there and I will convert Ed Miliband's seat from the Canadian format to this, possibly tomorrow. I do want to proceed as I am for now though and get everything from 1992 to 2010 in place, as already I feel like I'm painting the Forth Bridge with so many contradictory standards in place. In reality I've not found too many issues with 2001 onwards and it's mainly missing swings for 1997.
 * I'm thinking of a semi-automatic conversion to the new template, but I may be thinking ahead of myself. As it is I have all the 1992 data (bar the two Milton Keynes seats where I have no swings from Politics Resources, so I'll just copy these out of my old copy of the Guardian) ready to paste in to place. This gives us the content. Converting existing content shouldn't be too difficult.
 * You'll also notice that I'm taking a gentle approach to this work. I don't want to do anything too drastic until I have my feet under the table - and frankly until I'm sure of what I'm doing. I have the psephology and web design skills but I'm not used to collaborative authoring. Crooked cottage (talk) 04:13, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I've been having a look at the new template on Old&Sad and it's made me think. Let me say for a start that I fully support what you are doing with the new template, but I suspect we are going to need to do a bit of work on usage before this is rolled out across the patch. It's easier to document things (or not in some cases) with the old template. Hope this helps. I'll work tomorrow on converting Doncaster North and Witney to the new template, which are both uncontroversial I hope, but being the constituencies of the party leaders may create exposure. And next week unless anyone shouts very loudly on the current thread, that Canadian election table in Doncaster North is disappearing :) Crooked cottage (talk) 03:02, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The maths on the numbers in 2010 isn't supposed to work with reference to the numbers in 2005. We know that but someone reading is going to wonder why not, and might "fix" the maths. Note what I've done with Plymouth Sutton here. I'd like to see a footnote with similar wording.
 * With reference to the 1997 result, as I'm sure you're aware, the nominal result for Old&Sad in 1992 put Labour third in a three-way marginal. I know the media have a tendency to use this 'xxx Win' terminology, but I note that Politics Resources gives Old&Sad 1997 as a Labour Gain. I would personally like to treat this is a Labour Gain with an inline footnote explaining why. A news media organisation doesn't have the same scope as a serious psephological organisation.

Middlesbrough
Hi there. Given your current sterling work out and about among the constituencies (please take your hat and scarf) I really hope you won't mind me pointing out that Middlesborough is in Kentucky and that the English one, that Shangri-La, that fragrant town of rare beauty and grace, that sunny tourist destination, is Middlesbrough. Hope this helps; thanks and best wishes, DBaK (talk) 08:32, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * How embarrassing. I almost always check links as I add them. Walker in Newcastle would have pointed to an article about rambling otherwise. Thanks for your help. Crooked cottage (talk) 08:40, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * (Walker - I love it!) You're very welcome, and many thanks for the nice reply. Cheers DBaK (talk) 08:55, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Electorate in infobox
Hi again

I see that in this edit you added to the infobox on Southampton Itchen a figure for the electorate.

Fair enough: there's a field in the infobox for that. But it was only when I saw it used on Southampton Itchen that I realised it's a problematic field, because the electorate fluctuates so much. Since 2001, the Electoral register has been updated monthly, so any figure in that box will be out of date within 31 days at most, and on average within 15 days.

I'm not sure whether to suggest that the field should be removed in its entirety, or whether we should move to including the electorate figure only if it is dated and sourced ... but as far as I can see having an unqualified figure is always going to be misleading.

Any thoughts? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:39, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I missed this, sorry. You are of course right that it is misleading. The figures come from here as I'm sure you know, and thence from points frozen in time by each commission. However, I wouldn't propose taking it out at this stage - two reasons:
 * The figures sometimes add value. See for instance Arfon. Or Isle of Wight if the figure was there (it will be later today). I think that these figures will become highly relevant as this is discussed.
 * There are likely to be dissenters, and I think there are far more important standardisation points at the moment where we need a concensus as a team.
 * I was following the leads of others rather than making too many types of change at once, knowing full well that it would need to be revisited. I'll update these as I go along to add a reference date, as I don't think it's controversial.
 * Population is another matter though. I'm not touching this. I intend - in time - to add in census data which gives the profile of the electorate. This is meaningful in a way that the simple population isn't. But that is for another day :) Cheers. Crooked cottage (talk) 13:34, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Successor constituencies in MPs list
Sorry, back again:

In this edit you removed the links to the successor constituencies from the list of MPs for Tyne Bridge. I see why you did that, but I have reinstated the links, because they are directly relevant to the table, and a reader who is just following list of MPs shouldn't have to look elsewhere for those navigational links, even if it does cause some duplication. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:57, 11 January 2011 (UTC) In either case, I'm wary of doing that, because a) many of the constit names are too long to fit on one line, so breaking after each entry creates a lot of vertical bulk, and many of the shorter ones line seem to work quite well with wrapping. My own feeling is that breaking can work OK in the infobox when the names are short enough to fit one per, so while I usually don't do that myself (tried it and reckoned that since in some cases it made things worse, I'd save the effort), so I'd not object to a few breaks ... but I dislike using bullet points in such a situation. Too much markup, too many display elements. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:38, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's fair enough. Largely I've done that only when the table becomes ugly. But on this subject (shout if you disagree or want to add anything):
 * The list of successors in the MP table must match that in the info box or the reader becomes confused: they're often visible at the same time. They should be listed in both cases in the order of descending percentage of electors.
 * Huntingdon is not a successor of Bedfordshire North (UK Parliament constituency) in 1997 when only 17 voters change: it's a ward boundary change. The cut-off I think should be when one or more wards chsnge. R&T isn't always clear here so I'll work to a 2% cut off for now unless I happen to know otherwise.
 * To avoid messy tables use  to split two successors and a bulleted list for three or more.
 * I'll recheck my changes, and work to the principles above. I don't think that it will create many changes. Cheers. Crooked cottage (talk) 08:42, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Hey, no need for me to shout! I really enjoy the way that we can discuss these things so amiably :)
 * Agree that the lists of successors should match. Good work checking on that
 * Not sure what's a good minimum point to list successors, but I don't think it should really be less than 2% to be listed. Obviously, even smaller shifts can be noted in the text of boundary changes, like your example from Bedfordshire North, but that's clearly way too trivial to include in the list
 * Not sure what you mean by splitting the list of successor constits. Is that in the MPs list or the infobox or both?
 * You are right, hard and fast rules are difficult here. I'll play this by ear and people can say if they are unhappy. Crooked cottage (talk) 09:51, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Event rather than election
Just spotted a series of edits such as, changing the table header on the list of MPs from "election" to event.

Why? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * See . If you read it end to end, it looked like a consensus to me. "Election" doesn't work because of party changes, "Year" doesn't work because of by-elections. At one point you yourself adopted the same wording as I had (see ). It was then suggeated by Zangar that 'I think "Event" is a good column heading for all the eventualities' and no-one disagreed.
 * However - it's easily enough changed. The word we use isn't important, so long as we agree. Crooked cottage (talk) 09:08, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I had missed that particular point in that discussion.
 * So far as I can see there, nobody apart from you commented on the "event" heading. You raised the issue for consideration and were quite entitled to assume that silence=assent, so I do acknowledge that you went about this quite properly (as you always do!) .... but I think it got a bit lost in the other issues discussed there, so I'd like to re-open that point.
 * I'll open a new sub-section there, and post my substantive thoughts there. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:24, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That thread did ramble - I'm a bit tougher at work avoiding digression, but I realise people give for free. As I say all I'm aiming for is consensus. Crooked cottage (talk) 15:36, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Not your fault at all!  But with the benefit of hindsight, I think it'd be a good idea to summarise the agreed changes at the end, just so everyone could see what was done.
 * Anyway, I have re-opened the discussion: see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_Parliament_constituencies. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:26, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I've just supported what you are saying. This was down to me allowing the conversation to ramble. Lesson learned. Thanks. Crooked cottage (talk) 12:41, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Electorate figures
Hello, the 2011 electorate figures are available here, They are officially called 2011 electorate figures although the number is as of 1 December 2010. Mirrorme22 (talk) 18:09, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

2010 electorate figures
Hey.

I think there should be a place for them but not sure where. The Sixth Periodic... article, as I currently plan it, won't be suitable once the review process begins. There is Constituencies in the United Kingdom general election, 2010 where they could go? Indeed I better go off and think about which articles connected to Sixth Periodic...could do with a link...doktorb wordsdeeds 12:38, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree Sixth Periodic is not the right place but I wanted to check your opinion first. Constituencies in the United Kingdom general election, 2010 redirects to List of United Kingdom Parliament constituencies which is where I started. I'll put something on WT:UKPC later. Crooked cottage (talk) 13:03, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Nice one. Yeah, I think amending the table on List of UK Parliament constituencies... to show the electorate at the time and now would be good. Put a link to the Sixth Periodic Review... to show the step from present to future, all should be good! doktorb wordsdeeds 18:18, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

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