Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums/Archive 4

Coordinators' working group
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. &mdash; Delievered by §hepBot  ( Disable )  on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:20, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

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Thanks. — Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:06, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to change the election naming convention such that the date comes first
For those interested, I started a discussion over at the Poltics WikiProject about changing the election article name convention to dates coming first. sephia karta |  di mi  09:48, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Project rebooted
After a considerable period of inactivity, it is my latest endeavor to get this WikiProject up and running again. While it certainly has some mission overlap with WikiProject Politics, the work will be more specialized. My biggest issue with election pages is that the way election results are displayed; it's inconsistent throughout Wikipedia and I would like to fix that. More in the coming days. @harej 02:41, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Standardizing election results
Throughout the years, a variety of templates have been used for displaying election results on Wikipedia, including electiontable, election table, and on most of the US articles that I've seen, election box. Consistent design is professional design, so let's decide on a style for presenting election results and let's use it throughout Wikipedia.

A good template would be:
 * Usable for elections in all countries
 * Clean-looking
 * Not that difficult to use (an experienced Wikipedia should be able to use the template with little problems, and some random person looking at the template parameters being used on an article should get an idea of what they mean).
 * Logically arranged (this is where I have some reservations with election box).

Proposals welcomed. @harej 03:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * First thanks for taking the initiative in restarting this project. On the issue itself firstly election table has been redirected to electiontable, and quite rightly in my opinion as election table definitely had the worst appearence of the templates in my opinion. I have used both of the other two templates, election box for elections in the UK and USA and electiontable generally for other world elections.
 * I am not sure that it is possible to design one election result template that fits all the different electoral systems in use around the world. An election template for a single transferable vote election (such as in the Republic of Ireland) is going to want to include significantly different things to a first past the post election. Party list elections will put much less emphasis on the candidates than an election in the USA where the candidate gets a lot more importance than in other countries.
 * Having said this I think there should be a standardised format where there is the same electoral system and the country is the same. Davewild (talk) 21:20, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Or at least a standard format for a given election style. And even with layout adjustments for each election style (first past the post, Condorcet method, etc.), they should still be similar looking somehow. @harej 21:39, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I am glad to see this discussion started, as I have been convinced that election box and the whole plethora of associated elements listed here, can be made much simpler to use.
 * Can I suggest that in gathering proposals for ways to display the various types of election results, this project should firstly, identify good and less-good models based on their appearance on the page, and only later deal with how the programming of a new generation of election templates should be undertaken. Sussexonian (talk) 00:15, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes -- before we reinvent the wheel, let us identify the good ones used throughout Wikipedia. Also, sometime after the WikiProject decides on a final template, should we try to make it a part of the manual of style, or should it be strictly a WikiProject recommendation? While I do not believe WikiProjects by themselves can set policy, I do believe they can be a part of the process. @harej 00:26, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In terms of appearance, I feel that election box is the more professional template, incorporating the centre-aligned headers into the box, rather than the Excel-ish electiontable. That said, electiontable gives more details in terms of seats won/lost, so it's more informative re: multiparty electoral situations. Electiontable is also more user-friendly. Would the display elements from election box be able to be incorporated into electiontable, and simplify the electiontable template when documenting single candidate runoff elections? Australian Matt (talk) 04:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Using parser logic, a lot of magic can be done to make election tables more extensible. I think my experience with merging the several merge templates down into merge, mergeto, and mergefrom will help me here. However, the two are so radically different in syntax that merging won't be simple. I imagine certain scenarios based on what we end up doing.
 * If we decide to make changes to election box within that template: we have to find a way to support both syntaxes within the template while the transition happens so that nothing breaks in the meanwhile. This could make this procedure unnecessarily complicated. If we decide to create a brand new template, then we will need to convert existing uses of election box (and related templates) to the new style. This eliminates the need of election box to support both syntaxes simultaneously). And in both cases, all uses of electiontable will have to be converted over to the new template.
 * Whatever templates we make obsolete in the process, I recommend that they not be made into redirects but tagged with deprecated so that people know to use the new template with the new syntax. But before we even go that far, let's heed Sussexonian's advice and pick out a template for its appearance then worry about the implementation. @harej 05:32, 5 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I initiated a discussion about this on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies recently, and devised what I think is a good format for British constituencies which you can see on Isle of Ely (UK Parliament constituency) among others. Sam Blacketer (talk) 17:56, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Definitely not a bad way to present multiple elections, but not the best use of space in my opinion. On the left side you have details about the specific election, which requires little space; then on the right side, you have all the candidates which requires significantly more space. I also believe that the gray bar should either be removed or at least be the entire width of the table. In any case, this is a format of presentation I had not thought of, and I thank you for showing it to me. @harej 19:26, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Looking at the mockup on WikiProject UK Parliament Constituency's talk page, it looks a lot better without the gray bar. Plus bolding the name of the victor provides enough separation between elections. @harej 19:46, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I am also delighted that someone has brought this up. What I would really likt to see is simplification. You shouldn't have to use fifteen templates in the same table to start it, list each candidate, give the total votes, turnout, majority, and end it. It's absurd to have all those at Template:Election box when they could be covered in a single template with many parameters. The biggest thing I would like to see is a merge of Template:Election box and Template:Election box begin no change, which each use a who different set of subtemplates. You should just be able to say "change=" within the template, and either just include it or not. And a separate set of templates to link parties or not? Very excessive. I'm glad something will hopefully be begun, but unfortnately I'm not good at the coding. I'd be happy to give some imput any time though. Reywas92 Talk 22:29, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Non-plurality vote examples of election boxes
Does anyone have any examples of articles that depict the results of elections such as the Condorcet method? I am thinking about the first draft of the template and I would like to see some examples of less common voting methods. @harej 05:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

First draft
Here is the first draft of the template's design and nothing more.

When this is made into an actual template, how it will work is that rows and columns will be added/removed based on what parameters are defined. For example, if  is not defined, then the row for reporting Swing is dropped. However, if you were to use this template for an MMP election, which requires an additional set of columns for reporting "party votes", by defining  (amount of "party votes" for the first candidate), you create that whole new column and then you are expected to define   for the rest of the candidates. I will explain more once I code the template. @harej 11:28, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It does not look bad, but it is perhaps a bit large. For pages such as this one where the election box template is used a number of times on the page, the above format could look a bit overwhelming as compared to the smaller current election box. I would also however definitely want % change in vote to be an includable parameter for pages such as this one where the previous elections are not stated and being able to quickly see the change from the previous election is useful. Davewild (talk) 11:53, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Percent change can definitely be done. Anyways, I have shrunk the template and re-arranged some things. Is this an improvement:

@harej 18:35, 6 December 2009 (UTC) (update: data changed so that I could use some real data). 20:53, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Basically I want to know if the design is good enough for me to begin work on an actual template. @harej 01:31, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but I think that huge box on the left looks terrible. There's way too much empty space and the notes are not necessary. I much prefer having the name of the election being on top as it has been. Reywas92 Talk 02:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The idea was to create a header that distinguished each box so that it didn't just all blend into each other. I have accomplished that goal in this revision in a much more sensible way. @harej 04:32, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Likewise, here is my attempt with party control. @harej 12:26, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Gallery of election templates
I have gathered together on this page some examples of current usage, some more attractive than others. Just press Edit to see the wild list of templates and subsidiary templates needed by the present system to display party colours etc.

Enjoy. Sussexonian (talk) 19:56, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I love this! There are many design features we could integrate into a template, and there are some curious design decisions we can learn from and not implement. The New York City election box made my head explode. I'll see what I can do to bring these design elements together. (Party fusion, which indeed only happens in New York and some other places, can easily be accommodated by only referring to one party and then listing alternative party endorsements in a note. For example, Bloomberg would be labeled as Independent, since that's what he personally goes by, but then we note that he has also been endorsed by the Independence Party and I think the Republican Party). @harej 20:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Template design suggestion
It seems to me that the best way to accomplish this (from a technical perspective) is to use a modular design - i.e. the main electiontable template would be little more than a frame that sets up a consistent design, and that template would take parameters that specify table rows of specific types depending on the election type. this would cut down tremendously on design overhead: we only need to design the outer frame and one sample row for each kind of election, the latter of which would be called repeatedly. comments? -- Ludwigs 2 04:19, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Article titles
A kind soul has produced a list of articles that contain "election" in the title. Here is the very, very long list. I would make this a discussion about standardizing the naming of election articles, but I think we got that down and now the task is mostly to get the unusually-titled ones corrected. If there is a naming inconsistency which needs to be discussed, please feel free to do so here. @harej 03:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * If the standardizing the naming of election articles is now established, please tell us where.--DThomsen8 (talk) 17:28, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Practice is set down in the Naming conventions (government and legislation) guideline. Davewild (talk) 17:46, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

How about a new name?

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was moved to "WikiProject Elections and Referendums. @harej 02:57, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Elections and Referenda → WikiProject Voting — This new name would be simpler, give the project broader focus, plus it would prevent the debate on "referendums" vs. "referenda". @harej 05:47, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Agree – I like the simpler name.   –Nav   talk to me or sign my guestbook 18:13, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Disagree - The suggested name is a bit close to WikiProject Voting systems, but that WikiProject seems to have died down a bit. I actually quite like the specific nature of this current WikiProject name. Also, it may be counter productive to broaden the project's focus - honing in on elections and referenda appeals to me. Australian Matt (talk) 04:49, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Personally I'm inclined to agree with Australian Matt, I specifically like to write about elections and referendums and keeping the project focused on them would be my preference. Davewild (talk) 11:55, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Just change cod latin 'referenda' to the correct English 'referendums'. That's all. Sam Blacketer (talk) 12:53, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Disagree If it needs to be changed at all, then I agree with Sam Blacketer; "Elections and Referendums" would be far more acceptable. However if a complete rebranding is preferred, then I would be willing to enter into a full discusssion! doktorb wordsdeeds 13:27, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Election results as a template separate from an article
I have noticed in many instances that election result tables are transcluded as templates, rather than a part of the article. United Kingdom general election, 2005, for example, is the election results table for United Kingdom general election, 2005. Is this a practice worth continuing? @harej 02:49, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it can be especially where the results are included on more than one page as is the case for United Kingdom parliamentary election, 2005 which is actually the template on United Kingdom general election, 2005. Having it as a template can make it easier for a new editor to edit as it removes a large amount of wikitext from the article itself making editing the actual text of the article simpler. I argued this here - Deletion review/Log/2009 January 30. Davewild (talk) 08:02, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Elections in the United States of America?
Does this project include elections in the United States of America?--DThomsen8 (talk) 17:21, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think I can safely say a definite yes, the project covers any elections or referendums anywhere in the world. Davewild (talk) 17:24, 18 December 2009 (UTC)