Wikipedia talk:Colors of political parties in the Netherlands

Hi all,

There are several instances of the colours of the Dutch political parties on different graphs, maps, and tables.

I think it would be highly beneficial to come up with a list of RGB values (both hexadecimal and decimal) for use in all articles and graphics relating to the Dutch political parties

Different colour schemes are to be found in:
 * Template:Netherlands general election, 2006
 * Image:ZetelsTK2006.png
 * Image:Netherlands municipalities results 2006.png
 * Image:Dutchparlseats2.png
 * image:dutchpolland.png

I have constructed the following set (based on the ZetelsTK pie chart) RGB values

Other colour schemes are of course fine with me; as long as they do justice to the common standard (ie red-socialist) and the colours are clearly different from eachother. Arnoutf 17:25, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, a talk page before there is even an article. I'm always in for something new. :) Also, I'm a great advocate of standardisation and into colours (photography) and webdesign, so I'm in. Sorry if I got a bit carried away (considering the amount of text I've produced once again).
 * A major consideration with standardisation is always that it has to be flexible enough for future developments, in this case for the emergence of new political parties, but I don't see how we could do that here. Also, there are the former parties, which sometimes appear together with the existing ones, like in your Image:Dutchparlseats2.png, but picking colours for those should come after these. Another cosideration here is that it should, if possible, follow international conventions. In this light Political colour is a potentially useful article. And of course the official colours of the parties have to be taken into consideration. Another general consideration is that black text against those backgrounds should ideally be legible. I suppose that's why you added those x's. Oh, and they have to come out right not only as blocks of colour, but also as lines in a graph. Too many considerations for now, but I thought I'd better jot them down. For example, those last two considerations together limit the choices too much, so maybe the background colour for text option should be dropped.
 * The easiest colour is blue for VVD. PVV being off-blue somehow fits. But in both cases the x isn't too visible, so maybe they could be made a little lighter. Christenunie has that colour blue in its logo, so that makes sense. The next easy colour is red for the socialist parties, in casu PvdA and SP. SP being tomato-red is appropriate. The official PvdA colour is a little darker, but not that dark, and it doesn't need to be to distinguish it easily from SP. The colours of SGP are blue and orange and the latter is an obvious choice.
 * So far not too many problems, but now comes the colour green, which is used by the four remaining parties CDA, GL, D66 and PvdD. I've added some shades of green to the right for 'inspiration'. :) CDA and D66 really have green as 'their' colour. The green you give for CDA seems slightly lighter than that colour. And your D66 colour is a little brighter than the official colour. I don't know if PvdD has an official colour, but one they use a lot is a dark green, so that might be a good idea. Of course we can't have four greens, but GL has two colours, red and green. I don't think red is too appropriate for GL, but what if we combine those two colours? Ok, that gives yellow. A colour not yet used, but not one that many parties would want to be associated with and it may not stand out enough against a white background. I played around with it a bit, but it keeps on coming out like yellow, orange or the colour of baby shit (or food, for that matter). :)
 * To the left what I came up with so far, with easier colour codes (the second, fourth and sixth position are really just for tweaking) and with the 'competing' colours next to each other for comparison. This is nowhere near definitive yet, but I'm getting a little tired and would like to 'retire'. :) DirkvdM 20:39, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Improved it a bit. First off, there's a colour overview at Hex triplet, but I've made a shorter one here (before I found that). And there's another consideration. Not everyone will have as good a monitor is I have. I wonder if the use of the characters 0 3 6 9 c f is better in this respect than the 0 4 8 b f I often use (which is not equidistant, by the way). So I added another table. Not quite a complete list, but it gives an indication of the usefulness of various colours. Blue always comes out rather dark with this approach.
 * Another useful colour is purple. Could be used for a catholic party, but we don't have that :) It's close to blue so that would be fitting for PVV. Maybe shades of purple could be used for parties that come and go. Sorry about the assumption. Ok, new right-wing parties then.
 * I've made PvdD brown, like you did, because a third green won't work. A disadvantage is that in a curve showing the development of number of seats over time PvdD and SGP might stay close together and not be too easily distinguishable. Also, brown is a colour associated with fascism. Hmmm ...
 * The list I have now uses only the characters 0 3 6 9 c f, but that might be a bit too restricting. DirkvdM 08:59, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * One major change I am now thinking of is to make the colour for CDA dark purple. It's the papal colour and it's close to blue and CDA is a centre-right-wing party. Also, it makes room for PvdD, whose orientation in the internationally understood colours is ecological, so they should really have green. And it rids them of the fascist connotation. This frees brown for PVV (oops). It would also make sense to give the christian parties similar colours, but I don't see a good scheme for that. Political colour suggests orange. But three different shades of orange??
 * Anyway, The three traditionally big parties now each have a dark colour, with the obvious red and blue, and CDA in the middle with purple, nicely reflecting the political spectrum. DirkvdM 09:33, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

CDA in purple may be a solution. Three shades of orange would be orange, yellow and brown.... For parties no longer represented I suggest to use less saturated (ie grayer) versions of the agreed upon colours. That means we should restrain from using greyish colours for current partices. In practice that would come down to adding a gray value towards which to center the colours (the distinguishiability is imho less essential there but continuous development is.) That would be something like:
 * Looks great, except for the CDA, its colour is green, other wise use yellow or orange, but purple is too confusing (Purple cabinets!) C mon 23:01, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I thought about that, but that's a cabinet, not a party. And the confusion would only arise if the word were written. But in reality, only the colour will be shown. With the purple cabinets that was the other way around - the word was used, but have you ever seen the colour purple represent it? Also, with the limited selection of easily distinguishable colours, I don't think we can afford to drop any major ones. (Which also means yellow is still available).
 * Using greyish colours for former parties sounds like a good idea. One problem is that this philosophy should remain valid for decades, and what to do then when present parties merge into a new party? Should their colours then change? I've added another table in the overview above. There were the three primary colours red green and blue and the 'even' combinations of two those (three would make grey). I have now added uneven combinations. These might be reserved for such new parties. The orange for SGP being the only exception. (And brown - see below.) Alas the dark versions of these don't add too much.
 * D66 now has such a greyish colour, so that would have to change. Greyish colours are created by using colour-values that are closer together. This also goes for CU and PVV in my scheme above. With PVV that isn't as visible, but it really is a greyish version of yellow. So maybe PVV could get yellow.
 * At the moment (!) in the Netherlands we have more left wing than right wing parties. And there have also been many christian parties (what if a muslim party were to arise? - complications, complications).


 * What I propose is the three basic colours red for left wing, blue for (liberal) right wing and green for ecological (roughly) and the combined colours purple/orange for christian and yellow/brown for conservative (far) right wing. We need the extra colours on the right because blue doesn't have too many useful variations. I'm still not sure about CU. It's a christian ecological party, which, however, itself uses blue. I've made GL a little darker.
 * Now for the former parties. Arnout, your example of GL poses a problem. The resulting party is now best known for being ecological, but the constituent parties were above all left wing. Making CPN green would be very odd indeed. I'd say the colours should represent the old party itself more than the new one. In most instances (CDA, CU) that won't be a problem, but in the case of GL it is. Also, the major left wing parties aren't combinations of former parties, so that leaves some room for shades of red. Alas greyish red is a bit like brown, the intended opposite here.
 * I don't know too well what those old parties were like, so correct me where I'm wrong.
 * In the ordering, I grouped the conflicting (similar) colours together as much as possible. I don't suggest that CP and CD are fore-runners of LPF and PVV, it just comes out that way when you group the conservative right wing parties together. That's why I've distinguished between the two by using yellow vs brown. Similar, but different.
 * What I haven't used now are the grey shades of green, so D66 could have kept that after all. And PSP is now pink. What if we ever get a gay party? :)
 * Anyway, this should still be tweaked a bit more, but I'm not going to do that until there is agreement to use this rough scheme. DirkvdM 11:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I have some problems with this:
 * D66 is a social-liberal party and not green, how about using purple for them? It seems quite fitting between VVD and PvdA
 * Why not exempt the CPN from the predecessors of GL category instead of making all red? (Which is very illogical for the non-socialist PPR and EVP). Make the CPN green and the others shades of green.
 * Why not make the Christian Democratic parties yellow; why not apply this to the SGP and the CU: this is logical for two reasons
 * It makes the three main currents of Dutch politics (liberal, socialist and Christian-democratic) the three primary colours
 * It has many shades which can be used for the great range of christian democratic parties, including orange.
 * Use grey for the non-classifyable/populist parties like the PvdV, LPF, CD, CP, including the AOV, U55+ and NMP-bloc which should not be classified as liberal.
 * It would look like this for the parties currently represented in parliament
 * - C mon 15:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Just to note, the original colours I used for the political parties are those from the parties' websites. That was for me an easy option to not get into discussions about what pillar parties should be put into. And no, brown or yellow is not an option for the PVV, even though User:DirkvdM likes that colour apparently. Intangible2.0 17:15, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, I don't like those colours because they have too little variation. So I gave them to a smaller group of parties. And brown is often associated with the extreme right, so that fits. DirkvdM 08:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I doubt there are enough colour variations to colour all present and historic political parties of the Netherlands. Why bother with political parties of 30 years ago? Present political parties aren't even that ideological anymore, so this colour according to pillarization system seems to be doomed for the future. Intangible2.0 20:03, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The three primary colours are red-green-blue (RGB), not red-yellow-blue. This is a common misconception. Yellow is one of the three combinations of those colours. See the table to the right. Like I said, the fact that I'm into colours is one reason I picked this issue up.
 * The idea was to use similar colours for similar parties. Green for D66 was indeed a matter of picking something that was left because they are hard to categorise and their party colour is green and they're one of the more green parties (well, not very, but they claim to strive for that). If we are to use similar colours for similar ideologies and lighter colours for extinct parties (Arnout's suggestion, and it makes sense) then yellow is a very bad choice for CDA because of the proliferation of christian parties. Historically that's 12 out of 31 parties (PPR, EVP, CDA, KVP, ARP, CHU, RKPN, KNP, SGP, CU, RPF and GVP), so over a third. We need a colour that has more easily discernible shades. Funny, I also suggested purple for CDA because it's between PvdA and VVD. But yellow is a realy bad choice. The three in my table are just about it. And even those are hard too similar.
 * Red for CPN makes too much sense. There are really only two clear internationally unambiguously understood political colours: red for left-wing and green for environmentalist (blue usually means right-wing, but that's not as strict). So making CPN green would be very confusing. Important here is whether the colour of a fromer party should represent the party itself or the party it merged into. I opted for the former and still prefer that. PPR and EVP could indeed be made more purple.
 * CU is still an issue. They're mostly christian, but there simply isn't another shade of purple left. Blue is their official colour, but green is indeed not a bad choice for them.
 * And blue is usually the colour for right-wing, not liberal, so that's how I used it. DirkvdM 08:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually yellow is one of the primary colours for pigment (paint etc). but not for light. You're right in that, but most people (including wikipedia wikipedia) mention it first when it comes to primary colours : if we branch out to shades of light green and orange, like I did, there are enough options.
 * Purple really is the obvious choice for D66, explicitly combining both social and liberal politics (social-liberalism) and advocating a purple coalition for a long time.
 * Red for the CPN it is; maybe better also move the Pacifist Socialist Party to the red collumn too.
 * PPR and EVP are difficult to classify, so forcing them to eat up space from the Christian-democratic parties, of which there is already so little, seems a bad idea, shades of green seem very logical historically (especially read the PPR article on wikipedia: it's very green)
 * And yet the AOV was neither a rightwing party, it was a party for the elderly! (i.e. leftwing populist). For other parties, including populists and nationalists grey seems very logical.
 * I've moved and update my proposal accordingly
 * - C mon 09:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Nice classification, perhaps make a bit more specific per 'bloodgroup'. And adjust some of the most dark and or painful to the eye colors (PSP purple toned down a bit) Arnoutf 11:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I can agree with making making the colour less aggressive and more pastel, but your classification removed some of the subtlies I included. I've tried to include all post 1918 parties now.

Ah I understand. I would not put Orthodox protestant as a separate group though. SGP qualifies but CU is already borderline Left. (You could as easily ague that the CDA/CHU/KVP are pragmatic christian rather than true christian). The basis of your colour system seems reasonably well thought true. Let us at least focus for now on giving the currently represented parties good colours. I doubt the D66, CU and the PVV proposal in that regard. Arnoutf 15:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Feel free to change it to more pastel colour etc and choosing more appropriate colours, as long as this scheme is more or less intact. About the CU being christian-social, all the parties there are either Christian-socialist or merged into explicitly non-religious leftwing parties, I don't see the CU doing that yet: for me they are still best classified as orthodox reformed. C mon 17:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok playing a bit with history now using your colours (not definite or accurate just to see how it may look when we add parent party info etc.) Actually I think this is not too bad as basic scheme Arnoutf 20:08, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Looks okay, I've moved the CDU up, because of its links with the PvdA. C mon 23:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm still not too enthousiastic about using yellow for christian parties. Purple simply has more variations than yellow, which are at the same time similar to each other (but still mutually discernible) and dissimilar to other colours. Purple solves both these problems. The variations of true yellow are too much alike and the other variations (as used here) are too much like red.
 * But if we go for this basic scheme, this version also needs some more work because several colours are very similar. That's why I arranged the parties in my overview according to colour similarity. D66-VDB is less of a problem because they're not contemporary. But DS70 and CPN were. But even similar colours for non-contemporary parties is not such a good idea.
 * SGP really should get orange. That makes too much sense. Especially if yellow is used for Christian parties.
 * I also thought about using grey, but my gut feeling told me that would lead to problems. Then again, it would be fitting for AOV and U55+. :)
 * And there is still the issue of tex being visible on the colours. Some are too dark for that. A new thought. Maybe dark colours should be used for extinct parties, in stead of lighter colours.


 * Also, why use such complicated codes? Do you use a colour picker perchance? Understanding the system and finding new colours is easier when simpler codes are used. For example, the code for CHU is FBEC5D, but why not make that FFEE55? Looks pretty much the same. DirkvdM 11:20, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * And yet purple is more logical for a social-liberal party (re+blue), instead of a party which is neither social or liberal (neither red or blue).
 * If you can disentangle similarities while keeping the basic schema in place feel free.
 * Why should the SGP be orange?
 * Actually if we use it four the four images & templates above (Template:Netherlands general election, 2006, Image:ZetelsTK2006.png, Image:Netherlands municipalities results 2006.png, Image:Dutchparlseats2.png, image:dutchpolland.png) we never need to write in them at all.
 * I actually used articles like orange (colour) and the templates beneath them and searched on basis of that. C mon 13:08, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * PVV does not descend from LPF but from VVD. --Gerrit CUTEDH


 * Like I said above, orange would make sense for SGP because they use that colour in their logo, because political colour says it's often associated with christian parties and also because it's probably the most monarchist party. But that's not very important.
 * You want to use blue for liberal, but it's more commonly used for rightwing (aka conservative) parties. As in 'true blue'. But as D66 shows, there is also the social aspect of liberalism. I gave the christian parties purple for a similar reason you gave it to D66. CDA is traditionally the party between VVD (blue) and PvdA (red). Also, purple is "one of the liturgical colors in Christian symbolism". But for me practical considerations are always very important. Like I said, there is a great abundance of christian parties in Dutch politics and purple has many more discernible, yet similar, colours than yellow. Different shades of yellow are too similar or, if you want to avoid similarity, you quickly end up with something that isn't yellow anymore, as the last three tables show. By contrast, the table to the right shows a much richer variation of colours, which are nevertheless very similar. Except some in the middle, but this is just a systematic reference table. Also not all really purple, but what's in a name. As long as the colours are perceived as belonging together. Try doing that with yellow. So yellow should be reserved for a political corner that doesn't see too many parties. DirkvdM 19:17, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

i am sure we can make all kind of nice ancestry trees... DirkvdM is right about the yellow, it goes to green brown or orange almost immediately. Although acceptable for CDA and predecessors I do not like the CU-SGP colours this way. Of course association Purple-Christian is biased towards catholicism so not truly neutral. Arnoutf 10:38, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Something like this with all christian parties in purple. Yellow is now gone; I tried first with Yellow for D66, but that does not work as distance to VVD is too large Arnoutf 15:48, 17 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I think it is not a good idea to leave out one colour interily, esp. one of the primary colours. Furthermore I think that the difference between socialism and christian democracy now seems gradual, as many of its shades of red border purple, while when it was yellow the difference was much more absolute. I'd prefer the yellow-red-blue system above. C mon 20:47, 17 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Good point, we have to solve the Yellow-Green colour for CU and SGP though because that is not good in the higher up scheme. Arnoutf 21:33, 17 December 2006 (UTC)


 * If we are going to divide the spectrum from orange to green over the christian-democratic parties, we need to categorize them: there are 12 protestant parties, 6 catholic parties and one oecumenical. Of those protestant parties 5 have a leftwing perspective (merging into GL or the PvdA) and 5 have an orthodox perspective, 2 are mainstream CD parties. Of those catholic parties two have a rightwing orientation (KNP/RKPN), one has a leftwing orientation (RKVP) and 3 are the mainstream catholic party. I think the scheme should reflect this complexity. I don't really care who becomes orange, yellow or green, as long as one can distinguish between these 7 categories. Therefore SGP and CU should be rather close, because politically they are rather close. C mon 09:01, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that CU and SGP should be close. Let us start out from now - 3 Christian Parties - 1 Central (CDA - I would suggest yellow) 2 Orthodox Protestant (I would say Orange). I would either go for a single Catholic group (as subdividing 17 parties into 7 subcats is a bit overdoing it; and none of those exist any longer). We could use yellow greens for the 6 Catholic parties; true yellows for the CDA and the 2 mainstream protestant parties; Yellow oranges for the orthodox (5) and Reddish oranges for leftwing (5). Problem of course is to link the parties to the rest, to the left is easy (through orange) but to the right (blue) the Green-parties are in between; but not giving Green to those does not seem reasonable.

Would be something like this - feel free to play with it (watch the connection to true red and green though) Arnoutf 18:50, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I did use yellow, for a group of parties of which there aren't too many (far right) and that is often associated with brown, so that makes some sense too. Indeed the purple should not be too red, as I already hinted ('the colours in the middle' in the purple-overview). That it lies between red and blue was intentional, as I also already said. (I am starting to repeat myself. :) ) This also gives the best opportunities to categorise the christian parties along the left-right scale (which seems more important than the catholic/protestant distinction); more red (second column) or more blue (third column). DirkvdM 09:34, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * DirkvdM, the difference between catholic and protestant is very important in Dutch politics. In the period of pillarization (roughly 6 of the 10 decades of the 20th century) the protestant-catholic-secular divide was as important as the socio-economic left-right divide (see Andeweg & Irwin Governance and Politics of the Netherlands p.20-21). Furthermore the categorization from left to right is very simplistic, see for instance Pellikaan Partijen in een Politieke Ruimte in the 2004 yearbook of the DNPP, for specifically Dutch multidimensional schemas. By using green for the GreenLeft and grey (or yellow) for the populist right any scheme proposed here does not approximate the red-blue left-right divide any way.
 * BTW I can fully agree with Arnoutf's division for CD parties. C mon 11:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * One may argue wether GreenLeft is more green or more left. I'm inclined to say more green. Give them an opportunity to determine the topic of a political discussion and they will most of the time pick the environment. For the simple reason that other parties don't. It's their primary raison d'etre.
 * The catholic/protestant division used to (!) be important too (and still is to some extent in the south), but how do you propose to express that in colours? Is that to go at the expense of the left/right division or do you want to express both with variations of one colour? That would ony increase the need for a colour with many variations. So that's an even stronger argument for purple in stead of yellow because there are too few variations of yellow. On top of that it's a colour that is hard to see against a white background, so preferably not one to pick for major parties. And it's the most used alternative colour for a background, so that would even be a reason to not use it at all (albeit a weak one). It's not generally associated with any political current and the colour that is closest to it, brown, is associated with the extreme right. The (less important) reason for purple, that it's associated with catholicism, may be less strong but at least it is a reason. There is no such basis at all for yellow. Oh, and yellow sitll isn't a primary colour. :) Although I do get your point and it should be used. Although the same goes for cyan (see below). DirkvdM 10:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Let me summarise my arguments on the 'purple/yellow for christians' discussion: One may question specific arguments, but the combination makes for a strong case, I'd say. Cmon, I suggest that below here you give such a list of arguments for using yellow and not purples for christian parties, so we can more easily compare. DirkvdM 10:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Purples are similar to each other (but still mutually discernible) and dissimilar to other colours, which makes them a good choice for the current with most parties in Dutch politics, which is christian.
 * Purple lies between red and blue and most christian parties lie between left and right (or rather 'social' and 'conservative').
 * Purple is one of the liturgical colors in Christian symbolism. Yellow has no association with a political stream., except, through brown, with the extreme right. And the other variation on yellow, green, has a clear connotation with a completely different political current (and it doesn't look like a variation on yellow).
 * Purples are better visible against common graph backgrounds.

For reference another colour overview to the right. I've used the basic colour scheme I gave above (red-yellow-green-cyan-blue-magenta) and expanded on it beyond 'ff' and '00', using also '88', for 'variations on the variations', if you know what I mean (the first variations being cyan (light blue), magenta (purple) and yellow). Ah, there's also cyan. We've completely forgotten about that colour. It might logically be used for variations on right-wing, so there's an alternative for yellow, but I don't fancy it. I now notice that there are actually more variations of colours that would qualify as blue than as purple. (I am learning ever more about colours through this discussion, thank you for that, Arnout. :) ) So it might make sense to use blue for christian parties, but any colour-organisation based on that would deviate too much from standard political colouring, so alas that won't work. Note how especially green spills over to the sides, more than the other colours. But these versions of green are too similar, so we can't use green for a political current that has too many parties. Yellow really is the odd one out because it doesn't spill over at all, so it should be used for a 'deviating' current that has few parties. Also note how there is a rather clear cut-off between green and cyan, so here's a more useful overview of the spectrum, rearranged on that basis, with lighter colours (higher values) and darker colours (lower values) added below each (adding 'bb' and '44'): I suggest using the primary colours red, green and blue for left, 'green' and right. The fourth major current is christian, for which I suggest magenta/purple. And yellow or brown for the extreme right. Which still leaves cyan. This happens to look a lot like the colour of ChristenUnie, but I don't see how we can use that bit of knowledge. DirkvdM 10:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Btw, Cmon, this discussion makes clear a reason we are so often in each other's hair. I prefer a systematic, 'hard science' approach to things, whereas you reason from what I would like to call 'the murky details of reality'. Of course we can not ignore reality (damn), so there is something to be said for both approaches. The twain have to meet. But I still stand fast by my principle that functionality must be the primary basis for any scheme. DirkvdM 10:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Just a small note on your work above. The RGB colour scheme does not take account of the psycho/perceptual properties of the human mind/eye; thus equal distances in the codes are not seen as equal colour distances. Other colour schemes (e.g., HSB - Hue-Saturation-Brigthness) do take account of the human perceiver. So Dirk, although your effort to standardise colour distances in RGB codes is appreciated we should not take that as a final aim. Arnoutf 14:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll start with sevenC mon 16:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC) good reasons to choose the spectrum between green, yellow and orange for the confessional parties
 * 1) There are three major currents in Dutch politics confessional, socialist and liberal; it seems reasonable to approximate this with blue-red-yellow
 * 2) In common sense colour theory yellow would be the logical choice to represent the current of politics that is neither socialist (red) or liberal (blue);
 * 3) If we give blue to liberalism and red socialism, purple becomes stuck between these two colours, while yellow can also encompass shades of green and orange, allowing for more possible colours than purple;
 * 4) Because there are so many shades between orange and green this allows us to show the precision and detail of the confessional part of the Dutch political party system in leftwing, centrist, orthodox and rightwing oriented and protestant and catholic. If we think creatively yellow has more shades than purple
 * 5) This would allow purple to go the colour that is both social and liberal: D'66 and the social-liberal tradition of VDB and Radicale Bond.
 * 6) As happy coincidence it would put the greenleft which might get green, to be close in colour to two of its predecessors the green-catholic PPR and the progressive-protestant EVP which are then likely to get some shade of green.
 * 7) In Dutch politics the colour purple paars is associated with the only cabinets since the Second World War without Christian-Democrats, it seems very strange to use it for the Christian Democrats then
 * 8) The CDA itself uses green which is closer to the green-yellow-orange spectrum then purple.

Please note the following counter arguments against your points, you mentioned across your arguments
 * 1) How much I'd like the GreenLeft to be one of the three major parties in Dutch politics, but it isn't not in seats or in influence. BTW It is not called GreenLeft for no reason as it encompasses both green and leftwing politics, defying this categorization.
 * 2) Purple is used in catholic liturgy, while "Many Protestant churches (particularly the Reformed groups) reject the idea of liturgical colours entirely." The Dutch confessional parties include both protestant and catholics, it seems strange to emphasize one of the two
 * 3) Almost every colour (including yellow, called gold by catholics) is used in liturgical colours
 * 4) As our schema will also be used for historic purposes it seems logical to allow for the three major splits in Dutch politics between secular and confessional, liberals and socialists and catholics and protestants and not collapse one of these splits to the limit colour of purple
 * 5) That a colour can some times be difficult to discern from white if used incorrectly, should not stop us from using it.

As always we are stuck in our trenches and not moving. Because this such an important decision, I do not intend to give in much, yellow is the obvious logical choice, purple in my view. - C mon 20:31, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Arnout, you're right that above table does not give an equal distancing between the colours. Maybe HSB would be a better basis, but the colours are coded as RGB in the Wiki source code, that can't be helped. It would make sense to make a table that gives a better distancing, but I was tired then, as I am now, so I might do that later.
 * Cmon, I asked about your reasons to pick yellow as the colour for christian parties, so I'll try to 'ignore' the other ones
 * 3. and 4. (which are really the same argument) That was my reason to pick purple - it's between red and blue, which most christian parties are. However creatively you think, green and orange are not shades of yellow. And green obviously makes more sense for the green parties.
 * 5. This is about a disagreement we have about the meaning of blue. I see it as a right wing colour and you see it as a liberal colour. A problem with that is that liberal is not the opposite of left (or socialist) - there are also leftwing liberal parties. Anyway, this is not a direct reason to use yellow.
 * 7. Like I said, purple was used for a coalition, not a party and only the name was used, never the colour, while here the reverse is true, so there is little chance of confusion.
 * 8. True, CDA uses green. I struggled with that in the beginning, but dropped it because it complicate matters too much. If we use the colours that the parties use for themselves that will not result in a systematic colour coding, which we want here.
 * So you really have only two arguments to use yellow, 3/4 and 8. Giving them 8 numbers doesn't make them more than 2 arguments. And argument 3/4 is actually my argument to use purple - it's in between red and blue.
 * You present the second list as arguments against purple, not for yellow. Note that my first two arguments are the major ones. And you don't react to those. The other two are minor, but I thought I might as well mention them. Green for green parties makes way too much sense. Red and green are the only two colours that have a clear political association (internationally). Deviating from that would be strange.
 * About your fourth point, the distinction between secular and confessional is already the issue here - which colour to use for christian parties (I don't see a muslim party becoming a major force in Dutch politics). The socialist/liberal thing is really about left/right, and on that we have agreement - that should be red/blue. The protestant/catholic distinction is a tricky one, as I already said. However, it is no longer very relevant in Dutch politics, so getting the colours right for that has a lower priority. Btw, note that we should really not just make room for the past, but also for future parties, as I already said, but that would be a bit difficult. DirkvdM 21:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, note the remark Intangible made several posts up, just before I posted this: "[...] Why bother with political parties of 30 years ago? [...] this colour according to pillarization system seems to be doomed for the future." Just so you wouldn't miss that (why did he put it way up there?). :) DirkvdM 21:13, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

About us not getting any further, I suggest that now that we have played out our arguments (again and again - we're merely repeating ourselves by now), Arnout takes on the role of judge. After all, he started this discussion and he seems to do most work with schemes and such for Dutch politics. Do you agree with that, so we can get out of this stalemate? Sorry about putting you in that position, Arnout. :) DirkvdM 21:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Summary
Reading all above: CONTENT WISE PRACTICALLY
 * The current parties should be presented in clearly distinguishable colours.
 * Yellow and brown have less then perfect reputation.
 * There is a large overlap especially in the use of green by parties themselves.
 * Purple is also difficult although this is a christian colour, it is not used in Dutch politics and is more Roman Catholic
 * Predecessor parties should ideally be representable in a colour close to the current party.
 * There should be a logical grouping that is reflected in the colour scheme
 * This should at least distinguish between Left wing / socialist parties | Liberal parties | Christian parties | Green parties | One issue parties
 * More detailed schemes have been proposed which should fit the colour spectrum
 * Yellow is not a very stable colour, it quickly turns to green, orange or brown with only minor addition of other colours.
 * On the other hand Yellow is a primary bright colour where purple is secondary and tends to be fairly dark.
 * Codes should use a format as simple as possible (e.g. ggee55 rather then f1e457) Arnoutf 14:12, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that in spite of the arguments in favour of purple I slightly prefer the yellow (including green and orange hues) for the christian block. I will try to come up with a full scheme one of these days Arnoutf 14:12, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposal current parties
Arnoutf 15:40, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposal all parties
I will fix the layout later on; for now the overview. Arnoutf 16:25, 27 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, that settles it then. Alas I can't really contribute anymore now. Not out of spite, it's just that I can't wrap my head around the logic of giving the colours green and red to religious parties, even though precisely those two colours have clear internationally understood political associations with parties (the 'greens' and the 'reds' - they're even named after those colours) that are traditionally far from religious (damn, I forgot to use that argument). And if I can't follow the logic it would be hard for me to participate in any further discussions. DirkvdM 13:28, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, you did (more then) your bit which I really appreciate; to be honest, the arguments were pretty close (many of the christian parties were linked to labour or green (e.g. Evp) so the colour are not that weird) and it has been my own subjective preference that tipped the scales. I will finish this and implement it on the non-talk page and notify every editor who has provides images with the colours. If a different consensus arrises in the future I will not object. Arnoutf 19:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

For some later editing rough hex to decimal table: 0	0 11	17 22	34 33	51 44	68 55	85 66	102 77	119 88	136 99	153 aa	170 bb	187 cc	204 dd	221 ee	238 ff	255