Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Congress/Ordinal congresses

Sub-sections / TOC limit
Using reduces the TOC to just the main sections without subsections.

This allows editors to use more subsections, such as:

Alambama
. ..

Alambama
. ..

Non-voting members
Without overloading the TOC.—GoldRingChip 17:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
 * This OK with me although hardly critical as with the existing standard it never applied, and only seems to when the non-voting delegates are subordinated which you have just begun doing. stilltim (talk) 03:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * In many articles, states are not under a section heading; they are manually indented and bolded. This standard would change that to make them headings.—GoldRingChip 11:53, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Italics
Italics for party designations or abbrevations aren't necessary.—GoldRingChip 17:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Italics distinguish the party information from the other information, making the presentation clearer. Not "necessary" but IMO a much better presentation. stilltim (talk) 03:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Middle Initials
Middle names, nicknames, or initials are unnecessary in these articles unless necessary for disambiguation. As a rule, therefore, don't make the piped links more elaborate that the live link. For example: —GoldRingChip 17:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Richard Nixon does not need the middle initial "M."
 * Tip O'Neill is sufficient, not Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill, Jr..
 * The proper presentation of names is very important. I have diligently followed the name form used by Martis, who is clearly following the most common usage by the Congress and the individual at the time. Let's let the congressional records and their scholars determine this and not presume to understand better. I think it is inappropriate and poor scholarship to override their conclusions and feel quite strongly on this issue. stilltim (talk) 03:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

President of the United States Senate
President of the United States Senate should be listed and linked as such. It redirects to Vice President of the United States, but future editors may find that avoiding this redirect is confusing.—GoldRingChip 17:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The documents of the Congress consistently refer to the Vice President as the "Vice President" and not "President of the Senate." We should follow their style. I thought we had found a satisfactory middle ground by listing both so there would be no confusion. Can we never settle these issues? stilltim (talk) 03:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Employees
In these ordinal Congress articles, employees should be listed by their names only. Do not include honorary or professional titles, which are better left in the person's article instead. Otherwise, we'd have to put "Hon." in front of every Rep. and Senator and who knows what else. It's just easier this way. For example:
 * The current Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives is Daniel P. Coughlin, not Father Daniel P. Coughlin or Monsignieur Daniel P. Coughlin.
 * The current acting Architect of the Capitol is Stephen T. Ayers, not Stephen T. Ayers, AIA

—GoldRingChip 17:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It is the almost universal custom to use certain titles and honorifics with applicable persons when the citation of the person is relevant to the title. When writing about an ordained person in the context of their professional responsibilities it is always appropriate to include "the Rev." It is only customary and appropriate for them in their role as Chaplain, however, and would not be if they were a member of Congress. The fact that much of the congressional documentation does likewise supports this. Once again we have debated this for years. stilltim (talk) 03:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)


 * May I respectfully suggest that these issues pale in importance beside the generally poor and inconsistent quality of most of the articles refering to the Congress and its members. I would much prefer to spend my limited time working on those things and not regularly rehashing these old issues. I consider the format used on Congresses 1-55 to be a standard mutually designed and agreed to by both of us and other interested parties through many discussions. In the best spirit of WP, the design incorporates many, if not most of your concerns, as well as mine. How about it, can we move on and work on new stuff, cooperatively? stilltim (talk) 03:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not clear on which officials/employees are to be included in the article. It says to use the biographical directory, however that includes far fewer officials than are currently listed in the boilerplate.meamemg (talk) 03:07, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Comments
The proposed guideline seems to follow the current established standard at 111th Congress. I have no real issues with that format, or the proposed guideline. If I have one criticism, it is the Party Summary charts (Version B). To me they are a nice graphic, but I prefer the text version A. Why do we need to know the party strength or that there were X number of senators of one party on January 15, Y number on January 20, and so on. Party strength is a very subjective thing. Did the Democrats party strength really increase after Specter's switch? His voting habits will be the same as a Democrat as if he had remained a Republican, so to imply that the Democrats somehow increased their standing in the Senate with his switch just by showing a incremental increase in the Democrats percentage verges on original research. I know there is the issue of 60 votes and breaking filibusters, but again there is no guarantee Specter will be the 60th vote now anymore than he was before. (Where it really impacts is party strength on the committees Specter served, where party line votes are more common and the real "magic" happens.)

Exceptions to the rule would likely be the 107th Congress, when Democrats took over mid session, or the current 111th congress, where we only have 99 Senate right now, and many non-US (and even some US) readers may not understand the details. But that could just as easily be handled textually in the Party Summary, and described in more detail in the lede as needed.


 * The 107th Congress was, in fact, the first article to feature that chart. Yes, strength is subjective, but it is relevant.
 * Good information, yes. And it kind of works in the more recent congresses where party changes and turn over did not happen all that frequently. But if you take the tables for the 4th Congress, the tables are rather long and on some screens take up so much room that you have to scroll to see the entire table. At some point, turnover becomes so great that these tables are unwieldily, so the table becomes the focal point, rather than the information it contains. Maybe we could limit information in these tables to major, notable changes (senator becomes president, congressman X switches parties, senator y resigns over criminal conduct), rather than for every death or resignation, and shorten the headers by generalizing (using the months that the switches took place, rather than a different line for each date).DCmacnut &lt; &gt; 12:48, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm ambivalent on the seating chart graphics and the US delegation division by state map. These articles do tend to be image poor generally, and it's nice to provide that visual cue. But I could take or leave them.


 * I agree. The images aren't great or useful. However, they do splash a little color into an otherwise dull article.

I support the formating of the rest (major events, major legislation, members). On Employees, I would prefer using the proper term "Officers," since those listed are different than other "employees" (floor staff, cloakroom staff, employees of individual senators). Just like all champagne is sparkling wine, but not all sparkling wine is champagne, all officers and employees but not all employees are officers. These are formal, elected positions. The Senate refers to them as "Officers and Staff", so if there is concern about the term officers being confusing, I would suggested renaming this section Officers and Staff for clarity.

On membership changes, I like the table format, with party cell shading. It allows more detail than can be provided in the Member section, and putting this information in its own section minimizes clutter in the Member section. I would prefer the Member section option "with a changes in membership section" where we only put dates next to names of those who left early or replaced other members.
 * "Officers and Staff" is OK, but I just don't want the casual reader to confuse officers with leaders. For many other organization, the President, Secretary, Treasurer, etc. are the "officers."  I agree that there are other employees other than the "Officers," but is it OK to have a list of some of the employees?  I'm fairly ambivalent on this, frankly.—GoldRingChip 10:18, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think WP:NOTABILITY should drive who is included here. That's also why I suggest moving from "employees." There are far to many employees in Congress, and the majority of them are not notable in their own right. Even then, some staff that have achieved their own notability would get their own article, and wouldn't necessarily be listed here. I don't think we need to know who the cloakroom staff are, who the reading clerks are, who the assistant floor secretaries are, etc. If we limit the list to the elected officers of the Senate and House we can provide a comprehensive view of who "runs" the Senate and House.DCmacnut &lt; &gt; 12:48, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Finally, do we need to consider incorporating alternative sort options for party affiliation, state delegations, etc.? Perhaps a different section listing members by party in either columns in a sortable table? It wouldn't need to be as detailed as the Members section, and for an members that resigned, died, or replaced others a little footnote symbol or a See Changes in Membership header would point the reader to that section for more information. I will develop a option like this and add it to the proposal for consideration.

Those are just a few of my thoughts right now.DCmacnut &lt; &gt; 01:59, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't understand the reason for various sorting options. It becomes repetitive if you show it again or fork it into a different article. Tables aren't used in most of these articles anymore and sometimes tables don't look good.  Besides, why bother?  If you need to find a Democrat, use your browser's "find."
 * I'm just trying to play devil's advocate with respect to the ongoing debate with Stilltim. Your absolutely right that with a electronic encyclopedia, you don't need to offer the multiple indexing formats one would need for a paper encyclopedia. Stilltim is likely trying to view these articles from the paper perspective, and trying to give the reader "options" in how they view the data. I think one sortable table, that only includes member name, state, and party, wouldn't add too much bulk to the article while providing at least one of the items on which he seems so insistent. Like you I don't really see a need for it. But I raise the question because as an electronic encyclopedia, are options are essentially limitless, and adding such a table wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. We've already got tables for membership changes, and I kind of like sortable tables as a formating tool.DCmacnut &lt; &gt; 12:48, 16 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you.—GoldRingChip 10:18, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

A change of subject
You all seemed to work through Stilltim's issues quite well. I especially like the comments that Wikipedia is fluid and no one person "owns" any article. This talk page is a great way to work through issues as they arise. On another note, a comment, and some questions.

The comment: I've left the pre 1935 ordinal congresses as ending March 3 rather than March 4. There is some debate to the actual end date. Martis and the Cong Bios end the 3rd. Apparently there are some sources which list March 4 (see List of United States Senators from _____ ). 2 to 1 for March 3 which is how I'm leaving it, plus it's a lot of work to add a day.

The questions: 1) For many congresspersons who have been successfully contested, especially those pre-1940, the congressman who lost the contest, even if he/she was seated for a number of months, and are referred to as rep-elect, Should the loser of those contested elections be removed from the congressional term if they are listed since they are considered rep-elects from the Congbio?

2) There are also some congressman elected and seated, but failed to qualify and then they resigned from their seats.    Should those congressman be listed as well or should they be removed?....Pvmoutside (talk) 22:55, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Members section
Wouldn't it make sense to fork the long lists of members into separate articles? They are awfully long, and we could do more with the information in a separate article. -Rrius (talk) 19:10, 7 September 2009 (UTC)


 * No, I disagree. The members section is a very large part of the article, but without it, the article would be sparse.  It would seem empty, in fact.  It's a very important part.  A list article can be long, and the members section doesn't excessively overload it.—GoldRingChip 21:19, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The article is really quite long. While the list is undoubtedly a very large part of the article as a matter of kilobytes, it is not a vital part of it. The articles can stand on their own with out the lists. I have drawn up a mock up here. Not only does it still work as a summary of the 110th Congress, but it is also better in line with WP:SIZERULE. The version I developed it from was 74kb, but mine is 40kb. According to the guideline, anything larger than 40kb might need to be split, anything greater than 60 probably needs to be split, and anything greater than 100 almost certainly needs to be split. If we were to fork the information, we could do much more with the information, such as making it sortable by name, state, district, seniority date, et cetera. -Rrius (talk) 00:19, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If I don't hear a response soon, I'm going to assume that I've overawed everyone with my arguments and implement my suggestion. -Rrius (talk) 01:22, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not in favor of this. The Members of the 110th United States Congress or any Xth Congress articles tend to be overly detailed with racial, ethnic, and religious demographics taking prominence over the actual list of members. I like the clean, simple list of delegations by chamber and state and chamber. Even the detailed table of members gives more information than is needed for a quick overview. The detailed articles are good as stand alone articles and should be added as a see also' heading, but I think someone visiting the ordinal articles would want to see exactly who served without having to click on an additional document where the information isn't so easy to find. Just my opinion.DCmacnut &lt; &gt; 15:11, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not necessarily proposing the use of the "Members of the Xth United States Congress Articles". In fact, my idea would be to put each house in its own page. Initially, the pages would consist of exactly what is in the articles now. I then propose converting these to tables sortable by name, state, party, class, etc. Converting to a table is not necessary, though. The main thing is to fork the members out of the main articles. The reason for doing this is not a preference for tables, but a dislike for the overly large articles we currently have. I have noted size guidelines above, and I would add that the tables take up not only a lot of bytes, but also a lot of vertical space. -Rrius (talk) 17:20, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm all for reducing space, but not every article needs to be shortened. I'm generally opposed to article forks, particularly list forks off an existing list. To me, forks are more appropriate where the topic is more prose and making a separate article makes the main one more reable, such as United States Senate and History of the United States Senate. I still think it's important to keep it all on one page, so readers don't have to click out for more information. But, I could support this if done the right way. Your new spin-out list could be viewed as a duplicate of Members of the Xth United States Congress, and could spawn Afds, so we need to take that into account. Does removing the list of members make the article appreciablly smaller?DCmacnut &lt; &gt; 17:33, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Forking is done to reduce the size of over-sized articles, and in this case, the article is overly large both as a matter of kb and of screen pages. Whether the lists would be viewed as duplicates is a separate matter, but since there are currently only lists for the 110th Congress and current members, it is not a huge deal. Again, though, these only exist for the current members and 110th Congress. As for the size difference, yes. The 111th United States Congress article is 74kb. I did a mock-up of the article without the lists, and it is 40kb. WP:SIZERULE says an article larger than 40 might need to be split, anything greater than 60 probably needs to be split, and anything greater than 100 certainly does. The article as is is between halfway between probably and certainly; my mock-up is right at point where you start thinking about it. In other words, even my mock up is sizable, but manageable. My mock-up is here. That link is to a particular version of the page, but I will leave the mock-up in my sandbox for as long as needed. -Rrius (talk) 17:54, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I still disagree, more strongly this time. (I try to be subtle, but I feel more passionate now).  The articles are not "overly large."  The size rule does not apply to list articles, and the ordinal Congresses are list articles.  Removing the members (forking them) seems like it neuters the article.  Barry C. Black is included but Barney Frank isn't?  Please don't do it.  There are plenty of other things which could genuinely benefit from your valuable attention.  —GoldRingChip 22:40, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * (unindent) With all do respect, I'll put my attention where I want to. The article can adequately tell the story of the Congress without listing all 535+ members. Whether you like it or not, the article as it is very long and has more information than necessary. Whether you think SIZERULE matters here or not, the fact remains that the article is very long. You call it a list, but that's not accurate. If anything, it is a collection of lists, and the lists for each house could be justified as two separate pages on their own. That there is more than twice as much information than that contained in those two combined should be a tip-off that there is too much info. The size issue is more than merely theoretical, it makes the thing difficult to navigate. Trying to get from, say, the party summary to the changes in membership section, you have to traverse a lot of ground. You shouldn't have to go up to the ToC to clearly related material, but you do. The Barry Black/Barney Frank problem actually highlights another benefit of change. By removing the list of members, it would be more reasonable to add additional information about the Congress, such as a list of committee chairs and ranking members. -Rrius (talk) 23:35, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not thrilled with my tone in that post, so I apologize. I don't have the energy to take this on, so I give up. -Rrius (talk) 22:07, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Reworking the sections
I have put a new proposed format in at WP:WikiProject U.S. Congress/Ordinal congresses/Sandbox. The differences between what I have proposed and the existing format are integration of the "Changes in membership" sections into the "Party summary" sections and the rewording of section headings to the numerous repetitions of sections called "Senate" and "House of Representatives". The renamed section headings would increase their utility for section linking, especially from other articles. Take a look and tell me what you think. -Rrius (talk) 06:55, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Soooo. Is this unobjectionable? -Rrius (talk) 11:32, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I like the changes you made to the index. I makes for a more navigable page. The only suggested small modification is to keep location of the "Changes in membership" section where it is now after the members roster.  You could move the Changes in membership/senate and representatives index identifiers into section 8 after the members list.  I think it flows better with the roster first and changes after. A nice job reorganizing in general Rrius!  Pvmoutside (talk) 13:39, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I have a big problem with the current placement of the Changes in membership section. Changes sections are at least as relevant to the party summary section as to the member lists. What's more, they are currently hundreds of lines and more than three screen pages from the party summary. On the other hand, if they were moved as I propose, they would be near to both the party summaries and membership lists. I'm not sure I see how the Changes, but not the Party summary, upset the flow by being ahead of the lists. Could you explain that? -Rrius (talk) 17:11, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure. To me, I'd rather see the entire list first, then see which members have changed, rather than seeing which offices have changed before seeing the officeholders. It's like reading an appendix before you read the main information.   I don't feel as strongly as you, so if you do change the order, I can live with it.  Your way as some relevance if someone looks at more than 1 ordinal, but ideally the ordinals should stand as articles unto themselves.  If one looks only at one ordinal, they see the change before the actual list, and that seems to me backward.Pvmoutside (talk) 18:53, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I still don't see the point. Under that logic, why not put the leaders among the members until after the members. Why not put the party summary and its ticking off of changes in party standings after the lists. More importantly, the lists themselves already contain the membership changes, so I don't understand why listing the changes together needs to wait. I don't at all understand how viewing the articles as individual or part of series comes into it. For me the change is needed because the three or so pages of lists separate bits of related information. I oppose having those lists at the articles, but GoldRingChip and, to a lesser extent, DCmacnut opposed that change, and no one else cared. The problem of having 30,000 kb of data in the middle of the article can at least be alleviated by putting related information together. -Rrius (talk) 19:35, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I don't have a problem with the changes. I really don't care where the "changes" piece goes. I personally have always questioned the need for the "party summary" tables, and would like to see those tables go away, but I know I'm in the minority. Originally, they were useful to discuss when the chambers switched party control (107th Congress) or when there was some unexplained reason for having less than 100 senators at the beginning of a Congress (111th Congress). I don't really see what benefit it provides otherwise. Why do readers need to know that party control shifted by a few tenths of a percentage point with senators so and so left office? The 111th Congress isn't the best example because this has an historic number of Senators leave offcie due to a presidential election. However, wholesale shifts in party control over a chamber mind-Congress are very rare and normally reserved to the Senate. Changes in membership, should be sufficient in conveying that information. Just my two cents.DCmacnut &lt; &gt; 20:15, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Senate elections
Which looks better to illustrate changes in Senate composition before & after elections? The difference is where the first Anti-Jacksonian is placed, ("A1"). The intent is to [bracket] the one-third seats that are up for electon, like in United States Senate elections, 2010. However, those bracket have yet to be done, as that's a larger task than just reformatting this table. (They'll both have they 'Key at the bottom but I didn't copy it twice here as it's the same in both version.) —GoldRingChip 15:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Discuss here
I sort of like Version B, but I'm not really sure. —GoldRingChip 15:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Templates for membership changes in Ordinal Congresses
I've created templates for both the US Senate and US House for the changes in membership outline in the ordinal congresses. I noticed that there are a various iterations under different ordinals, this will make them all consistent when the template is applied. Then if anyone would like to make changes to the outline, all they would need to do is change the template, then all would be changed simultaneously and consistently for all congresses. Templates are: Template:Ordinal US Congress Senate and Template:Ordinal US Congress Rep. Let me know what you think........Pvmoutside (talk) 21:36, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Order of Senators
You brought up a good point about the order of Senators. Therefore, I've changed a couple articles to list the Senators explicitly by seniority. —GoldRingChip 15:26, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * You said on my talk page that you changed some of the congress articles to list senators explicitly by seniority, but you seem to have changed the 81st Congress to list it by class number, rather than seniority. I think class number is a ridiculous order to list them in, because class number is something that is basically never used in any normal context.  Having them listed by class number is better, I suppose than the previous situation, where they were not listed in any clear order - there were even some cases where the junior senator with the higher class number was listed first - but I think listing by seniority makes a lot more sense, because that's how senators are always referred to - "the senior senator from Alabama," or "the junior senator from New York." john k (talk) 15:34, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Whoops. I blew it.  I meant to say on your talk page that I ordered by class.  The value of ordering by class is that it creates a parallel to the Representatives being ordered by District.—GoldRingChip  17:11, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * But classes aren't like districts. People talk about districts, and they're meaningful because they explain what part of the state the person is representing (although we admittedly don't do a very good job in our articles on districts explaining how they changed geographically over time).  Classes are meaningless - they're just a convenient way of indicating which seat is which, but they're almost never used in practice - I'd be surprised if you can find any references in the mainstream media as to how this year the Class 1 senators are up for re-election, for example.  It's useful to include the class number in the articles, but I don't think it should be the basis for ordering - especially since ordering the list is the only way we have to indicate who the senior and junior senators from each state are. john k (talk) 17:23, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Very good point. I ordered them by class because numbers look so nice in order.  But, as you say, they're meaningless.  How about we open this up to a broader audience?—GoldRingChip  17:39, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Party stripe template
Hi all, I've experimented with a new template I created that inserts a colored stripe before a politician's name based on their party, and implemented it at 117th United States Congress. Let me know if you think this is a useful addition. WMSR (talk) 12:25, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Section titles must be changed
See Talk:117th_United_States_Congress. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:39, 20 September 2022 (UTC)