User talk:The Duke of Waltham/SBS

As my /SBS subpage continues to function as the workshop for the development of various pages of WikiProject Succession Box Standardization, the comments below are usually irrelevant from each other. I have thus separated them with headers for each of the pages for which they were made.

Please add your comment at the bottom and always sign with four tildes ( ~ ).

Waltham

=Template:S-start/doc= I haven't read it closely, but I'll just say that I tend to just use Template:Succession box for succession boxes, rather than s-bef, s-ttl, and s-aft. Unless one wants multiple rows of one or another, it seems a lot simpler. john k 18:04, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, this template. I haven't heard it before. Well, I may add it eventually. Thanks for bringing it up. Waltham, The Duke of 18:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It was the original. john k 04:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I have only recently started looking deeper into all these boxes. In any case, it is probably preferable to use the new code. I find it less confusing and more consistent with the rest. Waltham, The Duke of 13:52, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

=WikiProject Succession Box Standardization/Guidelines=

Succession dates
I'm not happy with the idea that in a succession chain, we must have exact dates for all members of the chain before we can provide them for one member. In many cases, I think that would be impossible because the records simply do not exist. Rather if John Seagrave became Cinque Port Warden on May 21, 1423 then it's fairly clear his predecessor had to give up that post on the same day or the preceding day. However, we shouldn't have to know exactly when that predecessor *took up* the post, before we can post when it ended. I hope that's clear. The wording made it seem that for a chain of say 25 office-holders we'd need to know exact dates on *all* of them, before we could indicate exact dates on *any* of them. Wjhonson 14:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, that is the thought. We are aiming for consistency here, right? Waltham, The Duke of 10:08, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Date formatting
The issue of using either 30 May 2007 or May 30, 2007 has come up before. There is a setting under my preferences in your Menu bar above, which allows a person to specify the date format they wish to see. I believe that if the dates are wikified like May 30, 2007 the system will automatically re-arrange them into your preferred view without us needing to do it manually. Yes? No? Third base? Wjhonson 14:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Many users (like myself) do not set any preferences about dates, and so we should not take for granted that the date links will work for such preferences. For these users, as well as for readers that are not registered, there should be a standard format, as what we write is what they see. Waltham, The Duke of 10:06, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Succession Boxes for U.S. Congress
Not sure this should be mentioned here or on the main project page, but here it goes. As I understand it, this proposal is to standardize all existing succession boxes into one easy-to-use format. If so, the is innacurate as written. It provides the us parameter as being for "Congress of the United States" and sen for Senate of the United States. The United States Senate is part of the United States Congress, along with the United States House of Representatives. If is to replace the existing  and, then the guidelines here and at  should be changed to read us for United States House of Representatives and sen for United States Senate. If this discussion is more appropriate elsewhere, please let me know.Dcmacnut 17:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * For the time being, there is no problem with the conversation taking place here. We have noticed the problem with the headers and we are working on it; you must understand that we are somewhat busy right now. As we would like to create good succession boxes about members of the United States Congress as we have for the British House of Commons, we would also appreciate some feedback when we deal with that issue. I will let you know when that happens. In any case, thank you for your observation. Waltham, The Duke of 10:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * There, the problem has been fixed. Waltham, The Duke of 19:52, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

United States parameters for s-par
[Post moved here from main page] Sorry if this is the wrong place for this comment, but it would probably be more appropriate to use "sen" for senates and "hs" for houses. This would be much easier for people to remember (esp. people unfamiliar with the upper/lower distinction) and would still avoid confusion with reference to Houses of Representatives/Houses of Delegates. --Tim4christ17 talk 17:16, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It was the wrong place; the draft page is to show how the finalised page will look, and the talk page (this talk page, to be exact) is for the discussions. Anyway, it is nothing to feel bad about. It will keep me happy to know that if you repeat the same mistake you will be hanged, drawn, and quartered. ;-)
 * Your proposal sounds interesting. All upper houses are called "senate" and most lower houses are called "house of something". However, not all lower houses follow such conventions; California, Nevada, New York, and Wisconsin have Assemblies. Although we could ignore that relatively easily, I find it better to be accurate. Besides, my initial intention has been to continue with this format for legislatures of other countries, like those for Canadian provinces and Australian states. "Upper house" and "lower house" are accurate terms describing the houses of most bicameral parliaments (there are always exceptions, like the old Danish parliament, Rigsdag), and using those might even prompt people to learn more things about their legislatures. Besides, the convention will be explained in this very page (well, I meant the main page, not the talk page), which is where editors are supposed to find guidelines about succession boxes in general.
 * What do you think? Waltham, The Duke of 14:09, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Obviously the actual parameters would also be discussed at s-par. However, it makes much more sense to have parameters which are the least-confusing.  If it's called the "House", it should use "hs", the obvious abbreviation.  If it is called the "Senate", it should use "sen", the obvious abbreviation.  Trying to standardize across unlike things (the various differently-named legislatures) is counter-productive - not because of any inaccuracy, but because the most obvious and least confusing term/parameter is the preferable.  Consider the second and third paragraphs at WP:NAME, which state that we "should prefer what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity".  While that policy doesn't apply to template parameters, it is a good principle to follow and would avoid unnecessary confusion and frustration among Wikipedia editors.  --Tim4christ17 talk 03:44, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I do not believe the problem is a major one; after all, editors are supposed to look up the parameters as opposed to guessing them, and so they are less likely to be confused. In any case, you have persuaded me to take this to SBS's talk page. That way we may receive more opinions; if anyone notices, that is (we have been a little understaffed lately). Waltham, The Duke of 23:59, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Great progress – questions
I have been (very pleasantly) surprised to see that Whaleyland has finally started the heavy task of checking, correcting, and expanding the /Guidelines draft. That does not go to say that the other tasks he has taken up are trivial or easy, but I have directly connected the progress of this page to the progress of the WikiProject as a whole, and I am now glad to see it move on. I do have some questions for him, though:
 * I see you have erased the proposal for abbreviated end year (only last two digits). Does this mean you would prefer not to see such years in succession boxes? I also think it would be more formal to write both years with all their digits, although in regents the alternative might save some space.
 * I have meant the "General guidelines" section to encompass guidelines that should be considered irrespective of particular headers; it was not supposed to include the "Offices", "Hereditary titles", and "Distinctions" sections. True, the structure of the page is a little weird anyway, but I am sure we can find an alternative solution?
 * By the way, I like the numbering of guidelines; it makes the page clearer and it enables us to refer to guidelines by their numbers. Just hope that we will not be accused of writing legislation; I have written a law myself and it looks like it quite a bit. ;)


 * Talking about sections, I am thinking of creating a whole new section for lines of succession and orders of precedence, as their conventions are complex and very different from those of the other, more "regular" succession boxes. We don't need to add this section before we post the page, but we surely can start talking about it.
 * We could put the guidelines for those two boxes in "Distinctions", but the characterisation is not entirely appropriate and the configuration would be odd. I know that lines of succession go under "Royalty" headers (I have confirmed that once and for all by contacting WikiProject British Monarchy), but it would be unwieldy to introduce an entire section about lines of succession into the s-roy one. A simple note and intra-page link at each end would suffice, I believe, to make an acceptable connection between the two parts of the split content (header and succession box).
 * The best name for the new section I can come up with is "Precedence"; but I am sure about what its position should be: between "Hereditary titles" and "Distinctions". Not only is this the appropriate position in the order of headers (and the general order of importance) but the section is closely connected to royalty/nobility as well and should thus follow it.
 * And if we are to start thinking about the future, we can plan another section at the end for succession boxes for non-human entities (now that sounded weird), titled "Other" or something similar. You know, the perfect home for river crossings, rail and underground railway stations, successor states, books, etc.

Keep on the good work, Mr Whaley; the main course of SBS's re-organisation dinner is almost ready to serve... Waltham, The Duke of 22:57, 30 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Next chance I get I will reorganize the numbers. I already have gone through a few drafts to get them right.  The reason you stated is actually why I began it.  While it may not be law, we can at least state that WP:SBS guidelines IV:iii states that ...  I thought it may work better to keep our project in line across wikipedia.  I did remove the abbreviation link because I figured that doing that requires typing the entire date anyway and it may cause some ambiguity in the late BCs and early ADs if people do not remember to designate which is which, etc.  I also though that two extra digits usually do not make a succession box look any fatter, and with the proposal to make the templates wider on the table, I figure it may become a dead issue anyway.


 * Lets hold off on adding anything about lines of succession and precedence. The main talk page actually just brought up an issue with the latter one of those.  We obviously need to bring up both issues, but I don't think they are critical at the moment.  Perhaps putting a little extra section on other types of succession boxes, however, would help.  On a similar note, I added a table of contents to other pages on the mainspace; you like?  It includes a link to an official version of that cleanup page I made, minus most of the conflicts...those are all reincluded into the titles section now (which I will now be renaming headers to remain consistent). – Whale  y  land  (  Talk  •  Contributions  ) 00:33, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

The title of Queen Mother qualifies, I believe, as an example of the latter; look at the box I have created for Mary of Teck (after being recently elevated to featured status) to see what I mean. By the way, it might be a good idea to start checking all featured biographies for missing/old/inaccurate succession boxes when we finish with the re-organisation of SBS and its templates; you will be surprised by the number of FA's without decent succession boxes. Waltham, The Duke of 15:07, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Youknow, Whaleyland, if we are to reject the two-digit-years policy (and I am perfectly fine with it), shouldn't we remove all two-digit years from succession boxes? Not massively, of course, but when we find them?
 * I would be much distraught to see the lines of succession and orders of precedence go. But fine, I will do nothing for now.
 * The list is helpful, if only until the template system will have reached something close to completion. But I warn you, I have a draft (almost finished version, actually) ready for both the main project page and the talk page, so don't try too hard to improve those. As soon as the /Guidelines draft is posted, I will replace it with these in my SBS subpage. I have even included your latest edits and our newest member in the draft project page, so there are really few things to take care of before we post that too. Waltham, The Duke of 02:32, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * If political offices of Parliament are to remain in "Political offices", why does the introduction to the s-par section mention "parliament titles" in general? Is the section not supposed to be discussing parliamentary seats alone? That is why I changed the section's title from "offices" to "seats" several days ago, after all.
 * By the way, I am asking for the removal of the la parameter of s-par in WT:SBS.
 * I suppose you have italicised the first paragraph of the "Baronets" section in order to make it look like a lead section? If so, it is a good idea, but only as long as it is applied to the other sections as well.
 * Should we write any guidelines for the use of s-vac? Some titles create obligatorily continuous succession chains and "vacant" should be written in succession boxes in every occasion that a (long enough) vacancy occurs; other titles are only occasionally filled and thus the succession chains are not constant, so "vacant" should not be used in their succession boxes. How are we to say (to editors) which is which?


 * The WikiProject Peerage guidelines for succession boxes for baronets are somewhat different from the format you are promoting in the /Guidelines draft. You haven't chosen this one just because it was the one you've found in the Denis Thatcher article, right? Please tell me you haven't.
 * The thing is, I find the WikiProject Peerage guideline better, both visually and because the real title is just "Baronet". If you'd have the courtesy of comparing the two formats before deciding, you might see why I prefer it. I have put up a section about baronets in WT:SBS asking (among other things) which format we should prefer; you might want to make a comment there.
 * And please start watching a few template pages and talk pages relevant to this project; lack of coordination is quickly becoming a serious problem. Waltham, The Duke of 14:54, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought we categorised peerage titles by seniority? That is the WikiProject Peerage guideline, and I agree with it. Waltham, The Duke of 16:46, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I will regard these three paragraphs in three of my own, despite the level of depth for each one. Regarding paragraph I:
 * I was not aware that there were any succession boxes using any double-digit dates but I think they should be reverted. The amount of space it saves is not significant enough to require a loss of one or two digits.  I won't put any more effort into the subpages for now unless you request me to.  Perhaps those pages (if completed) should be implemented now.  I am glad our newer members are officially joining, although I am thinking we will get more once everything is done.
 * Paragraph 2:
 * Change them back; bad word choice is more common for me than I wish to admit.
 * Good. I will note it when done in the completed proposals page.
 * I think I corrected this problem but not positive.
 * Didn't we resolve this elsewhere? I think we did.  Either way, leave s-vac vague for now until something comes up that we MUST do something about.  I think s-new is more in peril currently and I think it may need to change soon.
 * Paragraph 3: I was promoting something that seemed logical to me, but I am not good at checking other project standards. If the baronet page says something different, they are our senior and win.  I'd check other pages but I already have 8 I regularly check up on and hardly have time on some days to manage the updates on those, especially since I am virtually administering the project talk page right now.  I agree with the peerage page and I thought I had seniority too, but I also thought that we categorize by date granted first, perhaps I am wrong.
 * I believe that is all. I sometimes forget to check this sub page, hence the reason for the delayed replies.  Sorry, I will check back here more often.  Hope all is well with you! (Harry Potter 7 is coming soon!) – Whale  y  land  (  Talk  •  Contributions  ) 22:46, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

S-rel
Two thoughts on this. First, I don't see a generic "Protestant" or "Christian" parameter, something like that could be useful as there are countless individual denominations/divisions of Christianity, not to mention non-denominational churches/movements (perhaps a customizable parameter?). Also a guideline on whether/if/what titles should be included for non-hierarchal, or congregational, denominations - particularly for those where the majority of the positions which deal with multiple churches have administrative, not ministerial roles (e.g. a District Superintendent rather than a Bishop) - could be useful. --Tim4christ17 talk 10:55, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you have a point there. However, given that this is no longer a proper venue for the discussion of the /Guidelines page (as the draft has finally been moved to its proper location), I would suggest that you should take this to the main SBS talk page. I apologise for the inconvenience. Waltham, The Duke of 09:52, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * er...I had already posted it there - just didn't remember where I'd put the original comment so I could strike it out. --Tim4christ17 talk 09:57, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought I had seen it somewhere, but my memory is somewhat weak. In any case, this message will no longer trouble us. Waltham, The Duke of 10:30, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

=WikiProject Succession Box Standardization/Offices=