Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New Zealand/politics/Archive 3

Ministries prior to 1890
I've just archived historic talk page content and the reason that the 2007 discussion above hasn't been archived is that I have some further thoughts on this. As a result of the above, we now have pages for all the governments since 1890, which is great! The following template goes with it:

Obviously, we've had governments prior to 1890, before political parties had come into being. These governments are usually called ministries, based on the premier's name, and sometimes the name of the two leading figures. For example, the first of those ministries was the Bell–Sewell Ministry, and my thoughts are that we should have pages for those governments, too. So, how about we call the first one Bell–Sewell Ministry? I propose that we use a hyphen without spaces between names, and use a capital M for Ministry in this case. What are your thoughts?  Schwede 66  03:30, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it should be Bell–Sewell Ministry, with an en dash, as per the MoS (see MOS:ENDASH), and with a capital 'M'. Adabow  ( talk )  04:00, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok, here's my attempt at this. One of the things that need sorting is that some ministries are not unambiguous, see for example Fox. The other thing that needs discussing is that the list below is derived from King's Penguin History of New Zealand, and the years and ministries might not necessarily align with the entries on the various premier pages (e.g. Atkinson is shown by King with two Ministries for 1876):
 * Bell–Sewell Ministry, 1856
 * Fox Ministry (first), 1856
 * Stafford Ministry (first), 1856–61
 * Fox Ministry (second), 1861–62
 * Domett Ministry, 1862–63
 * Whitaker–Fox Ministry, 1863–64
 * Weld Ministry, 1864–65
 * Stafford Ministry (second), 1865–69
 * Fox Ministry (third), 1869–72
 * Stafford Ministry (third), 1872
 * Waterhouse Ministry, 1872–73
 * Fox Ministry (fourth), 1873
 * Vogel Ministry (first), 1873–75
 * Pollen Ministry, 1875–76
 * Vogel Ministry (second), 1876
 * Atkinson Ministry (first), 1876
 * Atkinson Ministry (second), 1876–77
 * Grey Ministry (New Zealand), 1877–79 (note the disambiguation, as it's already in use in Britain)
 * Hall Ministry, 1879–82
 * Whitaker Ministry, 1882–83
 * Atkinson Ministry (third), 1883–84
 * Stout–Vogel Ministry (first), 1884
 * Atkinson Ministry (fourth), 1884
 * Stout–Vogel Ministry (second), 1884–87
 * Atkinson Ministry (fifth), 1887–91

Should these simply be added in front of the governments that are already in the template, or do we do something else? It's not directly comparable, as the First Liberal is broken down by King into the various ministries, e.g. Balance (1891-93), Seddon (1893-1906) and so on.  Schwede 66  19:45, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Progress report
I've been working on the Bell–Sewell Ministry and the link points to my userspace. If you have a look at the draft, you'll see that there's lots of historical context, but I haven't been able to find much substance on the Ministry itself. Please feel free to chip in. The reward is DYK credit (apart from filling a big gap in our political history). Before I'm happy with the quality of the article, I'd like to add a bit more substance to it. If need be, I start going through articles in Papers Past.
 * Bell–Sewell Ministry

I've had some lingering doubts that maybe Ministry shouldn't be capitalised. But that's resolved now, as I've had a look at Ministry (collective executive) and the lists that are linked to that article. Ministry shall have a capital M.
 * Should it be ministry or Ministry?

The government template needs to be updated and an incomplete draft is in my userspace. Working on this, I've come to the conclusion that we don't just need to add the responsible governments starting with Bell–Sewell, but we should really (ultimately) also cover Fitzgerald's first executive, and the second one by Forsaith. So, what I've done is to allow for three groups in the template. What I'm struggling with is what to call these groups. Have a look whether you think the labels are appropriate. And the bigger question of course is whether breaking this into three groups is the most sensible way to do it. And whilst you are at it, is Fitzgerald Executive as opposed to Fitzgerald Ministry a suitable way of distinguishing this from the responsible government that started with Bell–Sewell?
 * Updating the government template

That's it from me. I'd appreciate your feedback. And as I say, your additions to draft material in my userspace are most welcome.  Schwede 66  02:25, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I might as well put that template here. I propose that we start using it when the first of the current redlinks goes blue.  Schwede 66  21:25, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

List of New Zealand Ministries
See my sandbox for a list of Ministries from Wilson page 59-98. It uses the titles from Wilson eg Fox Ministry, 1856 rather than Fox Ministry or First Fox Ministry, as I wish to finish the list and make into a Wikipedia article before the book is due back at the library. The Ministry title above (eg "Fox Ministry") could be added for the pre-1890 ones that are likely to have an article on them. Wilson goes to the "Lange Ministry, 1984" and presumably it could be continued to the present. Hugo999 (talk) 23:26, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Excellent work, Hugo. To make this a bit easier, here's a copy of the beginning of the list from your sandbox, and then the same list with redlinks, so that we know what we are talking about in detail. I don't mind to use this system in lieu of the above. Whatever system we agree on, can I suggest that it resides on this page?

Here's Hugo's list: Here's my suggestion of particular article names:
 * Period Without Responsible Government 1854-56
 * Executive Council: 3 January 1854 to 7 May 1856
 * Unofficial Members: Fitzgerald Ministry, 1854; 14 June 1854 to 2 August 1854
 * Unofficial Members: Forsaith Ministry, 1854; 31 August 1854 to 2 September 1854
 * Cabinet Government 1856-1964
 * Sewell Ministry, 1856: 18 April 1856 to 20 May 1856
 * Fox Ministry, 1856: 20 May 1856 to 2 June 1856
 * Stafford Ministry, 1856-1861: 2 June 1856 to 12 July 1861
 * Fox Ministry, 1861-1862: 12 July 1861 to 6 August 1862
 * Domett Ministry, 1862-1863: 6 August 1862 to 30 October 1863
 * Whitaker-Fox Ministry, 1863-1864: 30 October 1863 to 24 November 1864
 * Period Without Responsible Government 1854–56
 * Executive Council, 1854–56: 3 January 1854 to 7 May 1856
 * Unofficial Members: Fitzgerald Ministry, 1854; 14 June 1854 to 2 August 1854
 * Unofficial Members: Forsaith Ministry, 1854; 31 August 1854 to 2 September 1854


 * Cabinet Government 1856–1891
 * Sewell Ministry, 1856: 18 April 1856 to 20 May 1856
 * Fox Ministry, 1856: 20 May 1856 to 2 June 1856
 * Stafford Ministry, 1856–1861: 2 June 1856 to 12 July 1861
 * Fox Ministry, 1861–1862: 12 July 1861 to 6 August 1862
 * Domett Ministry, 1862–1863: 6 August 1862 to 30 October 1863
 * Whitaker–Fox Ministry, 1863–1864: 30 October 1863 to 24 November 1864
 * Weld Ministry, 1864–1865: 24 November 1864 to 16 October 1865
 * Stafford Ministry, 1865–1869: 16 October 1865 to 28 June 1869
 * Note: Wilson says: Ministry was defeated on 15 August 1866 and resigned, but carried on in a caretaker capacity. However 3 Ministers resigned and were replaced. Though this was regarded as a new ministry, it was in fact a reconstruction, and is so regarded here.


 * Fox Ministry, 1869–1872: 28 June 1869 to 10 September 1872
 * Stafford Ministry, 1872: 10 September 1872 to 11 October 1872
 * Waterhouse Ministry, 1872–1873: 11 October 1872 to 3 March 1873
 * Fox Ministry, 1873: 3 March 1873 to 8 April 1873
 * Vogel Ministry, 1873–1875: 8 April 1873 to 6 July 1875
 * Pollen Ministry, 1875–1876: 6 July 1875 to 15 February 1876
 * Vogel Ministry, 1876: 15 February 1876 to 1 September 1876
 * Atkinson Ministry, 1876: 1 September 1876 to 13 September 1876
 * Atkinson Ministry, 1876–1877: Reconstituted, 13 September 1876 to 13 October 1877
 * Grey Ministry, 1877–1879: 13 October 1877 to 8 October 1879
 * Hall Ministry, 1879–1882: 8 October 1879 to 21 April 1882
 * Whitaker Ministry, 1882–1883: 21 April 1882 to 25 September 1883
 * Atkinson Ministry, 1883–1884: 25 September 1883 to 16 August 1884
 * Stout–Vogel Ministry, 1884: 16 August 1884 to 28 August 1884
 * Atkinson Ministry, 1884: 28 August 1884 to 3 September 1884
 * Stout–Vogel Ministry, 1884–1887: 3 September 1884 to 8 October 1887
 * Atkinson Ministry, 1887–1891: 8 October 1887 to 24 January 1891 (known as the Scarecrow Ministry)

The differences are:
 * This uses endashes and two-digit years for year ranges as per WP:YEAR.
 * It suggests what we do with the happenings during the 1st Parliament.

Is this generally acceptable? And regarding the comment "pre-1890 ones that are likely to have an article", I envisage that there will eventually be an article for every single one of them.  Schwede 66  03:20, 11 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The List of New Zealand ministries is now an article. Noted in the discussion that Woods has three instead of one ministries for both Fraser and Muldoon. I have kept to Wilson's single ministry, with a note re Woods Hugo999 (talk) 10:58, 25 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I've further updated the list of redlinks above:
 * Apparently, the two digit years for year ranges is not the way to do things (see this conversation) and I've changed it to four digit years
 * Stout–Vogel should have an endash
 * I've done the same amendments to the Government template. I'm about to publish the Sewell Ministry, 1856 article.  Schwede 66  18:54, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Local elections
What are we going to do about the local body elections this year? It would be good if we get all the (at least mayoral) results onto WP this time. If we do this, will we put them on the New Zealand local elections, 2010 (that seems like it will overload the page, though) and/or individual results on each article (eg Mayor of Auckland) under an "Election results" section like in electorates (see eg Hamilton East (New Zealand electorate)) and/or create a page for each election in each authority (eg Auckland mayoral election, 2010) and have council results there, too. Please share your thoughts and other suggestions, Adabow  ( talk )  06:37, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Some thoughts on by-elections
We have a list of New Zealand by-elections and I've been adding to it as I work my way through the Canterbury parliamentary history of 19th century. The list is nowhere near complete, but it's getting very long, with 148 entries, most of them redlinks. I wonder whether it needs a bit more structure. Well, in my opinion, it does, the question is how?

We have Category:By-elections in New Zealand results templates, which lists the by-elections by decade. So far, there are only seven of those templates. And for completeness, there is Category:By-elections in New Zealand, which lists all the by-elections that have their own pages (so far, we have 27 pages in that category).

One way to structure this could be to list by-elections by parliamentary term. So there could be a heading First Parliament over the by-elections that happened before we voted for the second parliament and so on. We could then have a template for that parliamentary term. I envisage the template to be used on all the electorate that had a by-election during that term, plus of course on all the by-elections of that term themselves.

A problem with having templates by decade is that some parliamentary terms are across two decades. So if we were to include templates with those electorate pages that have had by-elections, some of them would have two templates.

I appreciate that by-elections are becoming a bit less frequent under MMP, and there weren't any in the 46th and 48th term. So maybe we should have one template for 1996 onwards.

What do others think?  Schwede 66  00:44, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * What about grouping them by government rather than by decade. See Category:Governments of New Zealand.- gadfium 04:50, 25 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Interesting thought. That would definitely work post 1890. Prior to 1890, governments changed rather quickly at times (sometimes only lasting a fortnight), so we'd need something different for then. See also the Ministries prior to 1890 item above. Maybe a mix:
 * By-elections by parliamentary term up to 1890, and
 * By-elections by government post 1890?  Schwede 66  04:59, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

User:Schwede66/Sandbox/Template:NZ by-elections, 5th Parliament has had (now published) an attempt of a template.  Schwede 66  20:02, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I can't really see the point of having a series of navboxes with only a few articles each. Why is a restructure needed? Adabow  ( talk )  09:22, 29 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Upon reflection, I agree that a series of navboxes is not the way to do it. There should be more than just 'a few' in each. The reason that I suggest a restructure is that the current system works with decades, and as such it cuts across electoral cycles. By-elections 'belong' to a particular parliamentary cycle and if we do restructure this, that's what should be taken into account.


 * I've had a look what others are doing. Here's a list:
 * Template:Aus by-elections 41st parl - Australia federal by-elections are one per parliament
 * Template:NSW by-elections 52nd parl - same for New South Wales
 * Template:Qld by-elections 50th parl - same for Queensland
 * Template:WA by-elections 37th parl - same for Western Australia
 * they don't seem to have a template for Tasmania
 * they don't seem to have a template for Victoria
 * they don't seem to have a template for the South Australian
 * they don't seem to have a template for the Northern Territory
 * for federal Canada, they have one page for all the by-elections per year and no template
 * in provincial Canada, they follow the same system
 * they don't seem to have a template for Ireland (and very few by-elections)
 * Template:Malaysian by-elections - they have a single template for Malaysia and it is labelled "since 2000", and I don't know whether that means that they haven't bothered yet with prior templates, or didn't have earlier by-elections
 * in Scotland, there isn't a template for their 7 by-elections that are listed there
 * Template:By-elections to the 50th UK Parliament - UK by-elections are one per parliament


 * So interestingly, most other places do what I had originally in mind (and that was without me having a look first). I guess it makes more sense to do so in places with big parliaments like the UK, and a high resulting number of by-elections.


 * So how's this? Let's have one template covering the period post 1890 (i.e. prior to party-politics), another template until 1946, and a third one post 1946. So the first template would cover the first 10 parliaments, and I suggest that we have each parliament as a group within the template. The second parliament would cover the next 17 parliaments, and the third one the rest. I don't have a strong opinion whether 1890 and 1946 are suitable transition years, I'm suggesting this here to move the discussion on. I'd value your thoughts.  Schwede 66  10:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I see 1938 as a significant point to break from one era to another. I tend to view NZ electoral/parliamentary eras as; Pre-party era (1853-1887), One-party (Liberal) era (1890-1908), Multi-party era (1911-1935), Two-Party (Nat/Lab) era (1938-1993) and MMP era (1996-present). We could also consider 1890-1935 as one Historic, or Early party era. Fanx (talk) 12:26, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

By trawling through historic electorate and ex-MPs I've found many more by-elections - some listed, some implied (by dates that didn't accord with general elections). So far only covered known early electorates (some election pages do not list electorates) and only up to 1890. While some may have been presumed according to poor data I have identified a possible 144 by-elections so far unrecorded at List of New Zealand by-elections. I'm guessing the 1887 introduction of a £10 candidate's deposit was intended to halt this 19th C. version of waka-jumping. For my list see my NZ elections talk page. Fanx (talk) 15:47, 22 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Awesome work - well done. I was adding to the list until a few months ago, when I decided to get electorates sorted out first (currently doing Hokitika (New Zealand electorate)), and once I've done enough early parliaments, go back through the list and copy the by-elections across. Have you seen the related note on the project page under other tasks? I've just spotted two further changes during the course of the 4th Parliament (Westland South and Westland North were created) and those two elections constitute by-elections, too.
 * The best (wiki)news in ages for me is that I've finally managed to get my hands onto a copy of New Zealand Parliamentary Record. It's not the latest version, but the one from 1949, but given that I'm still rather busy with tidying up the 19th century, I won't run out of things to do in a while. So, if any possible by-elections need to be confirmed, feel free to run things by me. The other person who can help is User:Hugo999 - he's got a copy of most of the 1984 version of that book.  Schwede 66  02:45, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I've been researching early parliaments @ local library using New Zealand Electoral Atlas (Alan Robie, 1989) and have found by-election dates there. I've photocopied enough to get through the pre-party era. Robie does not list Town of Christchurch by-election, 18 Jan 1860 ... can you verify this in New Zealand Parliamentary Record as a by-election? ... or as an error?
 * As far as Westland North, Westland South & Westland Boroughs ... see The Westland Representation Act, 1867. Robie has these as Supplementary elections, held 3–9 April, 1868. I don't see them as by-elections (there wasn't an incumbent, or any prior establishment of the electorates) and I intend to treat them as special elections while keeping them in the by-election list - they are more like electoral redistributions that ordinarily would have been seen only at the next general election, and but for the fact of the explosive growth of the electorate. See also establishment of Marsden, Wiararapa, Cheviot & Wallace electorates under terms of the New Zealand Constitution Act, 1852 (a Westminster Act), which allowed the General Assembly to establish new electoral districts - another act in 1858 (name unknown) established the electorates and the election timetable. The Miners' Representation Act, 1862 and the Miners' Representation Amendment Act, 1863 respectively established the Gold Fields District and the Gold Field Towns electorates, and along with the newly created Dunedin and Suburbs North and Dunedin and Suburbs South electorates were also subject to Supplementary elections. Fanx (talk) 04:32, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Funny that - have been reading the Westland Representation Act 1867 earlier today, but haven't written it up yet. Have to fly; will hopefully be able to respond tomorrow before we go on holiday.  Schwede 66  05:20, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Useful link, thanks, found Electoral Districts Act 1858. 08:44, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Regarding the 1860 Christchurch by-election, it sure did happen. Paperspast has in recent months put the Lyttelton Times online (1851–1862), so that gives direct sources. This article has all the details. Scholefield (1950) lists Sewell's election history on page 138.  Schwede 66  18:04, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

3rd Parliament
I've moved an article about the 3rd New Zealand Parliament into mainspace. It's by no means complete and can do with further input. I'll put some thoughts onto the talk page.  Schwede 66  23:45, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

An observation...
while assessing articles I've noticed a trend in politics articles to have well-developed prose articles (otherwise easily C and often B class) with absolutely no references. Going back and fixing these should be a priority. For examples, see some of the high-importance start-class articles. dramatic (talk) 13:31, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * That's a good point. In case you don't know, clicking on the numbers in the New Zealand politics articles by quality and importance table on the project page opens up a list of the articles that have matching importance and quality. This link shows the high-importance start-class articles.  Schwede 66  20:13, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Colours for parties
Election pages use colours for parties. Is there an overview page somewhere with links to all the relevant templates?  Schwede 66  00:07, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Index of New Zealand political party meta attributes. Mattlore (talk) 01:19, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Ta muchly. Have posted a query on the relevant talk page.  Schwede 66  03:13, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * No worries. If you dont get a reply I'd just pick an unused colour thats relevant (ie a yellow for Liberal) and use that. Mattlore (talk) 03:47, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Given that you've done this before, where do you find the table with the colour codes (e.g. #ffffff for white)?

This page has a whole bunch of them for different shades. --Andrensath (talk &#124; contribs) 05:50, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks - have muddled my way through this and added the New Liberal Party to the list.  Schwede 66  21:18, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I've now tried to define meta/shading for the New Liberal Party. I've used Template:New Zealand Liberal Party/meta/shading as a template and set up Template:New Liberal Party (New Zealand)/meta/shading, but can't understand why the background colour is not showing. I thought that maybe it gets its colour from the party template and so I've set up Template:New Liberal Party, but that doesn't solve it either. Can somebody put me on the right path, please? What have I missed?  Schwede 66  01:49, 6 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Seems to work fine using the NZ parlbox here. Adabow (talk · contribs) 05:26, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
 * New Meta/color (and Meta/shading) attribs should reflect any existing party imagery or colour branding first, then conventional colours according to political philosophy etc. See edit history of National Party meta/color for changes based on actual changes of party branding and changes based on conventions and differentiation from other party meta/color attribs. For want of any historic data to create Ratana/meta/color I used the red found in the image, Ratana_Church_Raetihi.jpg, currently at Rātana, as it appeared to be a traditional Māori red and sufficiently dissimilar from that I used for the Māori Party (taken in turn from a predominant shade on their then party web site design). Unfortunately the Māori Party no longer uses that shade so I presume an update may be in order, and as the historic Rātana Party and the current Māori Party are unlikely to have their meta data listed in the same wiki page (unless List of Māori MPs or List of Māori political parties are created) then there is little reason why the meta/color should not be recycled.
 * Further notes are to be found at Talk:New Zealand general election, 2008 Fanx (talk) 07:43, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * By now, there's some good guidance compiled here. Given that this is the talk page and eventually, this will disappear in some archive, would somebody feel inclined to distill the relevant info into an item for the project page?  Schwede 66  00:27, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

General election results
I've started shifting general election results into a template, and then referencing the info back into the article. I've done this for two reasons: If you want to have a look, here are the relevant links for the 1st Parliament as an example: I'm starting the work on the 4th Parliament now, putting the election results together first.  Schwede 66  04:00, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
 * For the 1st and 2nd Parliament, the election results were recorded with the Parliament article, but also with the relevant general election article. Obviously, the two versions were different. Referencing this from the template overcomes this problem, and it's easier to maintain the info, as it's in one place now.
 * For the 3rd Parliament, the results were only in the Parliament article, but not in the relevant general election article. Now that the results are in the template, it's easily referenced across to the election article.
 * 1st New Zealand Parliament
 * first general election
 * template with the first election results


 * I've finished compiling the results for the 1866 general election. The problem is that I get 71 MPs, whereas the elections website lists 70 MPs. I can't reconcile my results. The way I've gone about it is as follows:
 * Get list of electorates from first election (that was already there).
 * For the next election, see what the changes were in electorates from results published in newspapers (there were no changes in 1855).
 * Once list of early electorates is compiled, make sure that all members are listed (that way, I can also report on the changes during the term of each parliament).
 * Move onto next general election and repeat the cycle.


 * What the above process should achieve is that the early electorates should have all their details sorted. Either there's a silly mistake in my list somewhere, or the number of MPs on the elections website is wrong. Would somebody have time and go through the results list and double-check it against the 61 electorates? I can pass on my spreadsheet that keeps the tally of things - just let me know your email address (contact me through WP email). Thanks.  Schwede 66  19:16, 19 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I've found the mistake. The details for Henry Shafto Harrison representing Whanganui (New Zealand electorate) were wrong. We are down to 70 MPs, and that's what it says in the 1865 Representation Act, so all is good.  Schwede 66  00:59, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

politics vs Politics
I've only just realised that we have two project pages, with this one using WikiProject New Zealand/politics, and the second one using the same name, but a capital P for Politics. I'll shift the content of that page across to this one, and will redirect it. Some good work has been done there about organising photos.  Schwede 66  19:24, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Photos of current and previous politicians

 * User:SimonLyall contacted Speaker's Office in April 2009 but they were unable to help.
 * For sufficiently old politicians (before 1905) the NZETC has many photos under a CC licence from the The Cyclopedia of New Zealand. Be away that the work is vanity press so shouldn't isn't a prefered factual source where alternatives are available.
 * kiwiteen123 had an email from Phil Goff's Communications Director, who seems to be reasonably supportive. He said that the Labour Party's Flickr account was now free. kiwiteen123 (talk)
 * Perhaps that will apply to new photos, but the existing ones, including those uploaded on 1 October 2009, are marked as "All rights reserved".- gadfium 23:13, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Aparently newspapers/magazines are out of copyright to c1942, Truth & Weekly News have photos, and National Library has them on microfilm which can be scanned there to USB stick Hugo999 (talk) 09:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)


 * When I upload photos of historic politicians to Commons, I generally use the NZ public domain licence tag. You are not bound by what it says about copyright on websites if it's before the dates that the licence tag states. I've uploaded loads of photos that I got from sources like Te Papa, the National Library, National Archives etc.  Schwede 66  10:04, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

General election articles
Hello, I've recently joined this project. I have noticed that the leads for articles about New Zealand general elections are written in a lot of different ways. I think they should all be consistent. I have started changing them accordingly, modelling them after that for the 1993 election, but my changes at one article (for the 2005 election) were reverted. I think agreement needs to be reached on how to rewrite these articles. Linbit (talk) 07:22, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Māori seats vs Māori electorates
Just drawing your attention to the proposal of having Māori seats moved – comment if you wish.  Schwede 66  23:50, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

What exactly is a by-election?
In the article on by-elections, it gives the following definition: "By-elections in New Zealand occur to fill vacant seats in the New Zealand Parliament. The death, resignation, or expulsion of a sitting electorate MP can cause a by-election." No trouble with that.

We do, however, have other cases and I'm not sure whether they are by-elections, some kind of special election, or a kind of general election that happens at a different time to the main election. And if it's not a by-election, then it shouldn't be listed on that particular page, but would need its own article. Those cases are when new electorates get created during the term of a parliament. So far, I've come across the following instances:
 * 1858 (4 new electorates; yet to be added to 2nd New Zealand Parliament)
 * 1860 Hawke (New Zealand electorate)
 * 1863 Goldfields (New Zealand electorate)
 * 1868 first Māori elections

There might have been something else like this going on during the 4th Parliament, as the number of representatives increased from 70 to 76, and only 4 of those were made up by the new Māori electorates.

So, are those elections for new electorates by-elections? If not, what are they?  Schwede 66  01:35, 30 July 2010 (UTC)


 * A by-election according to Wood (Ministers and Members in the New Zealand Parliament; 1996) is Clutha, 18 Jan 1958 when the poll was delayed from the 1957 general election when the Labour candidate was killed in an accident Hugo999 (talk) 11:26, 30 July 2010 (UTC)


 * They are all by-elections. Look at your definition: "The death, resignation, or expulsion of a sitting electorate MP can cause a by-election." That definition doesn't say they are the only ways to cause a by election. I would include them all on this page. Mattlore (talk) 02:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Hm. I'm inclined to set up an article on Māori elections, 1868 and then add that to Template:New Zealand elections in the 'general elections' group in italics. In all other years, the Māori elections were held near the general election date (and as part of it), just not the first time round. Is there support for this? Dissent?  Schwede 66  02:53, 31 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I guess so. You'll need to add a new group in the Navbox for it, rather than including it in the general elections group.


 * But how about all the new electorates in the 1850s & 1860s; I dont want each to have a seperate entry on the Navbox; rather they should be on the Byelections article under the appropriate Parliament Hugo999 (talk) 00:03, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, Hugo.  Schwede 66  04:36, 1 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I propose a Merge of by-elections into their main electorate pages (Mana, Botany etc.). I cannot see an advantage in having separate articles when excluding the by-election results make the the relevant electorate pages somewhat incomprehensible. Also propose Keep New_Zealand_by-elections as a reference and REDIRECT by-election links to Electorate name (New Zealand electorate) Oh, and can we break the listing under each parliament? It's a rather awkward page as it is - a table layout should suffice. Fanx (talk) 18:08, 17 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your thoughts, Fanx. I've thought about it myself and here's where I've got to so far:
 * I can see the advantage of having separate pages for by-elections. Mana has turned into a comprehensive article, and I have no doubt that Botany will achieve the same.
 * I'm not quite sure what you mean when you are saying "when excluding the by-election results make the the relevant electorate pages somewhat incomprehensible". The by-election results are included on the main electorate page, as they should be. There should be some text, referring to the main by-election article, in the history section (which hasn't been added yet for Mana).
 * The List of New Zealand by-elections once had quite a simple layout and the current format was my attempt to achieve a table with consistent column width for all elections. At the time, I probably wasn't aware of how to fix column width, hence that somewhat clumsy supertable that we've got now. Are you proposing to have one table for each Parliament? As long as column widths can be kept consistent across all the tables, I'd encourage you to change things around. I'm happy to lend a hand, too.
 * I'm happy to discuss all of this further. Thanks for bringing this up.  Schwede 66  20:25, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * My reason for proposing by-elections be included only in the electorate pages is firstly to avoid repetition of the same data set (I've just fixed errors on Mana - on both pages). While a particular by-election may produce enough data to become a reasonable or 'comprehensive' article in itself, once the by-election is done it is not likely the article will grow and after subsequent general elections it is most likely to be referenced only from its parent page (e.g. Mana (New Zealand electorate)) or from List of New Zealand by-elections. Having it as a stand-alone article just adds another link-click to understanding little more than is already posted under the relevant electorate article. Whatever information (candidates, polling etc.) on the by-election pages could easily be accommodated within the electorate page.
 * For my take on list of by-elections see my Sandbox, User:Fanx/NZ election. Work in Progress - propose de-linking redlinks and removing reference to any parliament not having by-elections, as well as additional MMP parliament table to allow listing of list MPs who are voted into electorates. I have listed individual parliaments as minor details ... the focus should not necessarily be on parliaments but on the by-elections themselves. Fanx (talk) 05:55, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I came here after a note on my talk page from Schwede66, possibly cos I do a lot of work on UK MPs and elections, and have done a lot of similar work on Irish politics. So here's my thoughts FWIW: I would be very surprised if New Zealand by-elections do not fit a similar pattern of being generally notable, so I would strongly urge that editors do not remove redlinks to by-elections. An editor with access to the relevant newspaper archives will usually find it quite easy to assemble a worthwhile article on each of them Hope this helps! -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:21, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) In my experience with the UK and Ireland, nearly every by-election in the last century meets WP:GNG, by virtue of getting enough news reporting. I have found this to be the case even well back into the 19th-century, and plenty of them are capable of having substantial articles written on them. (see for example Blackburn by-election, 1869, which could be expanded a lot more). The only exceptions I have found are the uncontested ministerial by-elections from the period (pre-1920s) when an MP had to seek re-election on being apppointed as a minister, and some (but not all) other uncontested elections.
 * 1) As to the list of by-elections, I suggest that editors may find it helpful to look at List of Irish by-elections. All the elections are in one big table, sortable under multiple columns. It was converted nearly two years ago to use a format I devised, and I think that the end result is much more usable than the previous multi-section list


 * Thanks, BHG. That's very useful feedback. Yes, you do a lot of good work in this area, which is why I encouraged you to give us your thoughts.
 * Fanx, I've had a look at the sandbox and edited what's there. The edit summary should explain my thoughts. In addition to that, it occurred to me that the year is repeated on each line (both with the existing article and in your sandbox). Maybe that can be avoided. Other than that, it looks good. I like your suggested breakdown of parliamentary periods. There can be some text above each table for context, where it can be pointed out if there weren't any by-elections for a particular parliament, so I'm good with not listing those in the tables. But I have to digest the info above first to see what's done in Ireland etc.
 * I'd rather not remove the redlinks, though - they'll turn blue over time! I will deal with by-elections, but for the time being, I'm working my way through elections (this is the current project; chip in if you wish), but I tidy up electorate articles as I go, hence it's a slow process (they go from this to that).
 * I don't think that repetition of a dataset is necessarily a problem. What is a problem is when data are wrong / incomplete, and one has to go to both places to fix things. Transclusion overcomes this, as is done with this results template for the 1853 election, but which is also used in the article on the 1st Parliament.  Schwede 66  18:28, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

First three provinces
Editor Schwyz, who appears to be doing a lot of category work on provinces all around the world, has moved New Ulster, New Munster and New Leinster to new article names, adding 'Province'. His rationale was to have them "like others in Category:Provinces of New Zealand. He's also changed the template that goes with this.

I've left a note on his talk page:

"First of all, thanks for not just moving the articles, but to then also tidy up the respective template. But it would have been much more appropriate if you had dropped a note on the talk page of one of the articles, or gone to the NZ politics taskforce (as per the banners on the talk pages) with this proposal first. The difference between these first three Provinces, and the later 10 Provinces, is that the names of the later Provinces are still in use these days, so the articles do need that disambiguation, whereas the first three names are not in use at all. So if you had asked, we would probably have come to the conclusion of not moving the articles."

So what do you think? My feeling is to revert those changes.  Schwede 66  00:23, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
 * If "Province" would be there only for disambiguation, then it should normally be "(province)". But it is Auckland Province, not Auckland (province). The entities the articles are about are the provinces.
 * "New Munster" is already problematic, place in Wisconsin, province, island, propsed state. Also New Ulster can refer to other things. What if more other things pops up? Better do it correctly now. This also reduces the likelihood of false links, as there were on the provinces of NZ article, that may otherwise need lot of fixing work later. Schwyz (talk) 03:00, 2 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the articles may as well stay where they are now. While Schwyz could have communicated a lot better, having them as New Wherever Province is at least as clear as just having New Wherever, and as the pre-1853 Provinces are really just historic curiosities little remembered by today's public, the additional effort of shifting them back and reverting all the changes to links isn't worth it. Daveosaurus (talk) 06:54, 2 August 2010 (UTC)


 * There is one really big problem here - New Leinster was never actually a province. That page at the very least needs to be reverted.  The names New Ulster, New Munster, and New Leinster served solely geographic purposes from 1841 to 1846. - Axver (talk) 01:04, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Ted Howard
There is a move proposal for Ted Howard affecting this project and it hasn't as yet created much interest. I invite you to have a look at this.  Schwede 66  04:40, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Work on categories
Editor Good Olfactory is currently doing a lot of good work on categories. I wonder, though, whether we can have a discussion on this here before new aspects get started, to avoid having to rename categories, and to ensure that his thoughts align with those of members of this group. I for one am not sure whether we should have categories 'New Zealand MPs by xyz city' (as they have been created) or 'New Zealand MPs by xyz region'. And if the latter, should we be using the current regions, or the historic regions? Up to (at least) 1876, all the political reporting was based on the provinces, but that of course changed at some point. If we go for current regions, than we might end up with a 'strange home' for some historic politicians, i.e. regions that never existed when they were around.

I have invited Good Olfactory to comment here. One of the categories that is a bit of a mess is mayors and I'd be glad if we could tidy that up, too.  Schwede 66  22:06, 8 November 2010 (UTC)


 * My intent was to create ones for MPs for Maori, Dunedin, and Christchurch electorates but to stop there, since my good knowledge about these issues extends mostly to the South Island. I didn't have plans to extend it beyond that. I'm not really sure it would work to extend beyond other cities like Auckland and Wellington, because so many of the historical electorates have crossed regional boundaries. Even the current rural electorates often include parts of multiple regions. If I had to choose, I would say use the modern regions as the reference point, since it would probably get too complex to use multiple standards through time, but I personally wouldn't like to attempt this even using the modern regions. I can't think of an easy solution to this, unless we just do the major cities and put the rest in general categories for North and South Islands. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:20, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The other option would be to have them categorised by the name of the electorate they represented at the time (ie Dunedin North) but that would be of limited use (some would only have 1 or 2 articles in them). Mattlore (talk) 04:22, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think splitting them by electorate name would be overcategorisation in most cases (although that is what I would expect to find in the existing Category:Members of the New Zealand House of Representatives by electorate, based on its title). I'm also not sure that a NI/SI split is much of an improvement for the general reader over an NZ-wide category. (And MPs for Te Tai Tonga/Southern Maori could be in both the NI and SI categories, so it's not an entirely clear-cut criterion either.) Doing the major cities seems like a good idea though. --Avenue (talk) 11:04, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

New Zealand Members of Parliament
Hi team, over the last few months, I've been working my way through the early political history. We've had articles for each electorate since earlier this year (thanks to Hugo999), and I've added the 3rd to 10th Parliament (the latter ones are just stubs). Up to 1890, election articles have infoboxes for easier navigation. And whilst I'm working my way through the election results (I'm currently working on the 1871 template), I'm tidying up the electorate articles. By way of example, they go from rather incomplete to something that covers the whole period including a nice table. Dunedin took forever to sort out; they went crazy down there when the Central Otago Gold Rush hit and were creating new electorates left, right and centre, transferring MPs from one electorate to another without by-elections, and it's all reasonably poorly documented in the standard textbooks. To go from this to what it looks these days took many, many hours. And in the process of sorting out electorates, I've been working with Hugo999 to get stubs set up for the missing 19th century MPs.

So whilst there are a good number of electorate articles that have yet to be prettied up, I think we've got at least lists of all the MPs compiled with each article. At this point, I'm not aware of any missing MPs or redlinks. If you spot any gaps, let us know, but chances are that we have at least stubs for each NZ MP! I think the list is complete. That's reason to pause and feel good about ourselves. And please note that Hugo999 would have set up something like 90% of the stubs during 2010, so please give credit where it's due.  Schwede 66  05:34, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Congrats guys! Mattlore (talk) 06:04, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Tidying up Northern Maori, there was an 1891 by-election missing and Eparaima Te Mutu Kapa needs an article written for him.  Schwede 66  19:34, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Found another one, as Edward Shaw (New Zealand) (Inangahua 1883–1884) pointed to the wrong person.  Schwede 66  01:38, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * And found yet another one, but have already dealt with George Macfarlan myself. Maybe I made the above announcement a little too early...  Schwede 66  22:16, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Articles written for Messrs Kapa and Shaw. You guys are freaks writing all these other articles. Nice job. – Liveste (talk • edits) 06:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

template discussion
There's a discussion at Template talk:Historic electorates of New Zealand about what to include and what not include with the template. Can you please join in?  Schwede 66  18:07, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Supplementary elections
Created page New Zealand supplementary elections and edited electorate pages that referenced these as by-elections. Fanx (talk) 11:28, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Good work! Is one of the cited Acts the source for the name change to 'Gold Fields'? Wouldn't be a bad idea to briefly document the rationale for moves that aren't entirely obvious on the respective talk pages.  Schwede 66  01:59, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The Representation Act 1862 refers three times to this electorate, in the index as Representation of Gold Fields, in III. Gold-Field representatives, and in X. as Gold Fields representatives. The establishing legislation, The Miner's Representation Act 1862 has both Gold-fields and Goldfields. Searches on paperspast has generic articles or commentary with both single and hyphenated versions, while election discussion or results (Papers Past &mdash; Otago Witness &mdash; 29 October 1864 &mdash; GOLD FIELDS ELECTION) all have the full title as Gold Fields District - as does McRobie's New Zealand Electoral Atlas, (1989).
 * I considered naming as Gold Fields District, which appears as its correct name, but as other usage has District as a generic name for electorate I decided that it could be argued that district was possibly descriptive and that I'd leave it until we had consensus. Fanx (talk) 12:12, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Suburbs of /Auckland/ Suburbs electorates
I created Suburbs of Auckland (New Zealand electorate) as a separate page rather than a REDIRECT to Auckland Suburbs (New Zealand electorate). These were quite clearly two different electorates, separated by time (1853–60) & (1928–46) respectively, and also by location &mdash; in the first instance (Suburbs of Auckland) was what is now the inner city suburbs (roughly Ponsonby to Parnell via Mt Eden), while Auckland Suburbs was to the West (roughly the current Te Atatū, Waitakere and parts of New Lynn electorates). Fanx (talk) 22:36, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Good. Where do you get the geographic coverage from? It would be great if you could add that to the articles under a section 'Location', complete with a reference (of course). Scholefield, by the way, doesn't agree with you, though. There, it's a single entry, but that's not to say that Wilson (1985) has treated them as one (I'll ping Hugo to have a look). Either way, I agree that if it covered two quite different areas, we might as well treat this as two electorates.
 * I'm hoping that eventually, we'll get New Zealand wide maps for electorates drawn for each Parliament, and these issues will become a lot clearer. With electoral boundaries moving around, it might be good to have animated maps showing the changing boundaries as a timeline, as it's done for Provinces of New Zealand.
 * Motueka (New Zealand electorate) might well be another candidate for splitting up, as the Massacre Bay (i.e. Golden Bay) part of 'Motueka and Massacre Bay' would appear to be more or less identical with Collingwood (New Zealand electorate), so the first electorate was split into two. And Scholefield does agree with me in this case, as 'Motueka and Massacre Bay' has a separate entry from 'Motueka'.  Schwede 66  21:44, 8 January 2011 (UTC)


 * It sounds as though the two electorates are different ie inner suburbs and outer suburbs, though Wilson’s New Zealand Parliamentary Record (1985) lists them under the one name “Auckland Suburbs” (page 259). I do not have a copy of Wilson, but have a photocopy of some pages, otherwise consult a library copy. The electorate boundaries are given in Alan McRobies “Electoral Atlas of New Zealand” (pub 1980s?) though as they are maps of each island the cities are hard to distinguish unless there is an inset of the city. The Atlas was being sold (remaindered?) by the NZ Society of Genealogists last year, and the maps are also on the CD of the 1881, 1893 & 1896 electoral rolls put out by the society . Hugo999 (talk) 22:13, 8 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I got the information from McRobie (pub. 1984) - the cities have more detailed maps, see 1853 election. My access to the book is local library only (no copies of Scholefield or Wilson), text I photocopy but maps in monochrome probably aren't worth it - so . papersplus is a variable resource, often referring to "election for the Suburbs" but Grey's original proclamation has the official names. In reporting the first session of parliament the lowercase "suburbs of Auckland" is evident; "That F. W. Merriman, Esq., member for the sub- urbs of Auckland, be appointed Chairman of Com- mittees.". Incidentally, most rural electorates were titled "**** District(s)" - i.e. Wellington Country District and Motueka and Massacre Bay Districts - should we be working to these district names as well? Fan |  talk   01:54, 9 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah, the original text of the 1852 Constitution Act. Good find! Interesting that some electorates were called districts. I'd caution about renaming those; at least we should have a (formal) discussion about it. I'd be interested to read what subsequent NZ Acts call those rural electorates. 'Motueka and Massacre Bay Districts' might be ok, as that one disappeared in 1860 (i.e. before NZ Acts could possibly give it a different name, I assume). If you want to go ahead, I suggest you use the formal process using Template:Move-multi on one of the talk pages, and then refer to it from here. That way, we can give everybody the chance of voicing their opinion before anything happens.  Schwede 66  02:58, 9 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The various Representation Acts are fairly liberal with their definitions, with plenty of switching between adjectival phrase Xyz Electoral District, adjective District, proper noun Xyz District and non-defined Xyz with little intra-Act consistency (e.g. Timaru is defined as District in 1870 whereas 1875 has Timaru Electoral District redefined as two new Districts). I suspect that much of this (after the original 1852–53 definitions) is at the whim of those drafting the legislation.
 * Representation Act 1860 - No internal consistency - schedule has [This] Electoral District bordered by Foo District to West and Bar District to South
 * Representation Act 1865 - Electoral Districts (Selwyn, Coleridge, Timaru, Gladstone)
 * Representation Act 1870 - Wellington Country District, Selwyn District, Coleridge District, Timaru District, Gladstone District, Buller District, Grey Valley District, Hokitika District, Totara District
 * Representation Act 1875 - Waikato Electoral District Waipa District and Waikato District; Timaru Electoral District  Timaru District and Geraldine District; Abolition of existing Electoral District / formation of new District - Dunstan, Waikaia, Wakatipu, Port Chalmers, Roslyn, Taieri, Grey Valley, Buller, Collingwood. Fan  |  talk  05:33, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Shading color help
Can anyone work out where the NZ Parlboxes of Ann Batten, Tuariki Delamere, Jack Elder, Tau Henare, Tuku Morgan and Rana Waitai are getting there awful shading backgrounds from? As far as I know they should come from Template:Mauri_Pacific/meta/shading and Template:Te_Tawharau/meta/shading, neither of which exist. Te Tawharau doesn't even have a Template:Te_Tawharau/meta/color. What have I missed? Mattlore (talk) 20:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Also affects Peter Dunne, Trevor Rogers and Ross Meurant so it must be some kind of default for when the shading page doesn't exist I guess?? Mattlore (talk) 20:34, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I've looked at the first lot. I presume your question is about the colour for Mauri Pacific. On my screen, there isn't a colour in that field at all, rather it's white! What colour / shading does it display for you?  Schwede 66  22:39, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I get some sort of dark blue color - but I've never noticed it before so maybe it's a problem with this computer (not my usual PC) or IE. Also seems to be a different shade for Te Tawharau and Mauri Pacific. Odd. I'm just going to ignore it until it goes away. Mattlore (talk) 03:19, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah, I see. I've tried IE (I usually stay away from it, as it's a poor browser by any description) and yes, there I do get the same issue. I'd suggest defining the colours for those parties; maybe that'll make it go away for those (poor) souls who (have to) use IE.  Schwede 66  03:44, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Mauri Pacific has now been assigned an orange shading colour (thanks Fanx). Te Tawharau is dark blue in IE and Chrome, but blank in Firefox. However, an even worse case is Eparaima Te Mutu Kapa (party="unknown"): dark pink in IE, blank in Firefox, but black in Chrome. Seriously, where are these browsers getting their colours from? What's a better way for showing "unknown allegiance"? – Liveste (talk • edits) 04:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I suggest that we:
 * 1) point 'unknown' somewhere different than a dab page, and then
 * 2) define colours as per the usual process  Schwede  66  04:46, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I've changed unknown to Independent on that page for now - but change it back if you think thats too much of a stretch. Good to see its not just me! If only all browsers behaved like Firefox. Mattlore (talk) 20:08, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Re Eparaima Te Mutu Kapa, Wilson (1985) does not indicate any party allegiance, although he left Parliament in 1893 when they were loose anyway. Will check book on NZ Liberals in library Hugo999 (talk) 04:55, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Hugo. I didn't know that Wilson had party allegiance. Now if anybody wonders what they can give me for my birthday...  Schwede 66  07:22, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * No mention of Kapa in the book by Hamer on the NZ Liberals, and his opponent in 1893 & 1896 (Ngapuha) is described as a Liberal (though at times I think there were two candidates who both claimed they were the Liberal candidate!) Hugo999 (talk) 12:13, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I was getting a white bgcolor thanks to Firefox, so I didn't realise it was a problem in other browsers. I suppose Te Tawharau could use a Mana Māori shading ... only that doesn't exist either. I feel the best solution is another Template:NZparlbox non-party allegiance (or similar), where shading is a HEX value. Fan |  talk  12:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

 

Works, both for HEX numbers, current party/meta/shading and named colors. Breaks if incorrect or no party name. Fan |  talk  13:04, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Looks good to me. Thanks!  Schwede 66  20:57, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Included shading on the pages noted in first & second posts.   #CCF    for Conservatives (Meurant) #FEDCBA for Te Tawharau, and    #FD9    for Future (Dunne) ... naturally :) Fan  |  talk  <small style="color:#00D">02:04, 21 January 2011 (UTC)


 * By the way, a change in allegiance can (and probably should) be displayed in the formatted tables for electorates, too. That's only relevant when the formatting lists election years by row (some formatted tables lump all the elections for one member into one cell). You can see an example of that at Mataura, where David McDougall became an independent in 1933, whilst he got voted into parliament in 1931 on the United ticket.  Schwede 66  19:07, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Agreed, and I think we should look at reformatting electorate tables to the same basic pattern ... particularly any that are current. <small style="background:#EFE;border:#090 1px solid;color:#060;padding:2px;white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#660 0.2em 0.2em 0.3em"><big style="color:#C00">Fan |  talk  <small style="color:#00D">22:08, 28 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, I'd like to see the formatting where there's one line per election. The other type of table has one advantage, in that it can display the reason for change in representation. But that information could be covered in an history section (e.g. the incumbent retired, or got beaten, or died in office). I've now completed Waitaki (New Zealand electorate), which exists for the sixth time in its history. It's much easier to see the election history now.  Schwede 66  00:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Local government in New Zealand
This article has recently been created, and it seems odd that it hasn't been created before. So odd, that I wonder if it is a duplicate of an existing article somewhere? Adabow (talk · contribs) 10:11, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * When I spotted that article the other day, I had the exact same thought. Have you had a chance to have a look, Adabow?  Schwede 66  07:22, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Politics_of_New_Zealand seems to be all we had... Adabow (talk · contribs) 08:50, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * There's also plenty of detail tucked away in Regions of New Zealand, Territorial authorities of New Zealand, and the articles listed in the latter's "See also" section. --Avenue (talk) 13:47, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I've thanked the editor who set this up. Over to us now, I presume.  Schwede 66  20:45, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah... I always thought it was odd that there wasn't a standalone article summarizing the local government system in NZ. (Most other countries in the English-speaking world seem to have such an article - cf Local government in the Republic of Ireland, Local government in Australia and Local government in Scotland, for instance.) Hence why I created it, in the hope that it will expand with time. What I'd really like to see in the article is some detailed sourced information on the history and development of local government in NZ (counties, boroughs and so on) prior to the present-day system. I don't have the expertise to write that myself (not being a New Zealander), but, at a glance, some of the relevant information seems to be scattered around in List of former territorial authorities in New Zealand, Counties of New Zealand and Borough. WaltonOne 20:59, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Suggested collaboration on uBLPs
I'd like to suggest that we collaborate on the 12 remaining unreferenced BLPs. My idea is that we collaborate on a given article, get it referenced and expanded so that it qualifies for DYK, take a breather of a few days and tackle the next one. It's easy to get these to 'Did you Know', as unreferenced bios need to be twice expanded only (and have at least 1500 bytes of prose). Anybody keen to chip in? If we get at least three people together, I'd say we do a team approach. First one that we can collaborate on is Katherine O'Regan, which I'm working on in my userspace (feel free to edit there), as expansions have to be done over no more than 5 days (so when done, I'll just copy it across and that way it's done in 1 day, however long it takes me).  Schwede 66  19:36, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * O'Regan is done and nominated at DYK (thanks for helping, Adabow). 11 to go. I've copied Grant Thomas (politician) (Hamilton) into my userspace to give him a once over next.  Schwede 66  18:06, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Planning for the general election
I imagine that we're going to see an upswing of activity in relation to the up-coming New Zealand general election, 2011, has there been any particular planning for it?

I'm thinking it would be quite useful to have a checklist of things to do and not to do. Things like (transcluded list; click the link to get to the source):

Any other ideas? Stuartyeates (talk) 09:08, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Nice. Axe the "if we don't already have a photo of the candidate" – the more images, the better IMO. We should also sweep over the electorate articles to make sure that the results are there to 1999 (or earlier?) using MMP election box. Also post-election there will be a lot of work to do, so some co-ordination could be helpful. Adabow (talk · contribs) 09:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I've added a few more things and added some links and put it at https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User:Stuartyeates/Scratchpad feel free to tinker. Stuartyeates (talk) 09:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Good work. I've transcluded the content of your scratchpad to here, so that it's kept in one place. Please remember to copy the eventual content across to here if you ever use your scratchpad for something else. One query; why is that hosted on a secure server? When I went there, it logged me out, so I had to first log back in in order not to edit as an anon.  Schwede 66  00:47, 15 February 2011 (UTC)


 * You can access any Wikipedia page through the standard server or the secure server, but the login process is separate. E.g. at present I am logged in on the secure secure, but not the standard one, so any edits I make through the standard server would be as an anon. --Avenue (talk) 01:54, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Legislative Council 1841–1853
The earlier legislative council doesn't seem to be covered yet. I've started a discussion on the talk page of New Zealand Legislative Council.  Schwede 66  18:17, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Article alerts
Article alerts are working again. See the project page. If you'd like to keep a close watch of these alerts without keeping an eye on the project page itself (bot updates don't result in a watchlist notification of the project page), you can watchlist the notification page itself.  Schwede 66  00:39, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

PM infoboxes
I deleted the Governors-General from those infoboxes which had them. However, I was wondering, which is prefferd for the 38 articles? - having the Governors-General included or excluded. If the former, I can begin adding/re-adding them. GoodDay (talk) 00:46, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I would prefer to see the GGs listed for each PM. They are of great constitutional significance.- gadfium 04:48, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * They are relevant, so thanks for your offer of adding them back in.  Schwede 66  07:14, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I would say that GGs are very relevant. Adabow (talk · contribs) 07:24, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll begin adding the GGs into the 38 infoboxes. It'll take me awhile, as I'll be doing the same for the Australian PMs. GoodDay (talk) 14:31, 9 March 2011 (UTC)


 * My task is completed. Note: I've left out the acting governors & acting governors-general. GoodDay (talk) 21:05, 9 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Well done. Thank you!  Schwede 66  10:48, 10 March 2011 (UTC)