Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies/Archive 2

Historic constituencies
The progress section of this project lists only current constituencies. I realise that there is still a lot of work to be done on the existing constituencies, but I was wondering if there was any interest in expanding the goals of this project to include historic constituencies. I see three reasons for interest in historic constituencies.
 * 1) Consistency of historical information across all areas: some constituencies have existed for a long time and we have results and MP lists back a long way, others have only existed for a short while—surely someone living in a constituency created in 1983 is just as likely to want to know who the MP for their area was in 1885 as someone living in a constituency that was created in 1885.
 * 2) Future-proofing: some of the current constituencies will be abolished and become historic constituencies by the next general election.
 * 3) General Interest: some people just find that sort of thing interesting.

JeremyA (talk) 21:05, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree the project should include all constituencies, old and new, current and former, but the progress page is already pretty big and there are many former constituencies, I think the page should focus on the current constituencies because they're more important, however, there's no reason not to put the historic constituencies on their own progress page (and any of the constituencies which get abolished should be moved there when the time comes) -- Joolz 21:11, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Some modern constituencies can be seen as a continuation of older constituencies with slightly different boundaries and names and I think it is reasonable to add such historic information there with appropriate redirects. I have uploaded a PDF which contains a list of nearly all of the representatives for the Borough of Lewes from 1295-1885 to the Wikimedia commons (as suggested above). It is located here Does anybody want to help me put this information in the Lewes (UK Parliament constituency) article? Jooler 22:28, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, I raided Category:United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies (historic) and started a list of historic constituencies at WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies/Historic_constituencies. Maybe this should be a sub-page of /Progress? I sort-of agree with Jooler that where a name is changed with little adjustment of boundaries the old name can be a redirect to the current constituency page, so long as the current page mentions the old name—perhaps we can use the talk page of /Historic_constituencies to work out how to decide when to redirect and when to start a new article. JeremyA (talk) 22:59, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Please see also WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies/Historic constituency names. Laurel Bush 11:30, 14 September 2005 (UTC).


 * I've created a template for historic constituencies at Template:UK former constituency infobox. You can see it in use at Sheffield Neepsend (UK Parliament constituency).  All feedback is very welcome.  I've also been considering creating a list of former Parliamentary constituencies in the United Kingdom by date of abolition in the article space.  This would allow comments on the reasons for their abolition (e.g. rotten boroughs, University constituencies). Warofdreams talk 15:20, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Would the template work in Aberdeenshire (UK Parliament constituency)? Laurel Bush 17:16, 16 September 2005 (UTC).


 * I've added the template as an example. It'll look a lot tidier when there is a little more information on the different constituencies. Warofdreams talk 10:37, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Cheers. I have just left a note using Aberdeenshire (UK Parliament constituency) as an example in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies/Historic constituency names. Laurel Bush 11:11, 19 September 2005 (UTC).

West Midlands
Disambiguation pages with links is reporting undisambiguated links to West Midlands which should point to West Midlands (county). The links are inside the infoboxes built with the Template:UK constituency infobox template. If the template arguments are simply changed to “West Midlands (county)”, the “(county)” appears in the infobox. If “(county)” is added to the links in the template, lots of redirects would have to be created, and there might easily be questions about why Essex (county) redirectes to Essex instead of Essex County, or London (county) redirectes to London instead of County of London. There could also be a special version for West Midlands constituencies, or separate county and entity link arguments could be added to the box, which would probably mean updating all constituencies. Incidentally, why is it called “UK constituency infobox” when it specifically for England? Susvolans ⇔ 12:25, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree that's a problem, the easiest way round it is to make another template specifically for the West Midlands, before that's done I better check that no other county needs disambiguation. When I first made the infobox it wasn't going to be specifically for England, but because the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Ireland (and London) ones only use one map that's the way it worked out. The name is still accurate because it's still constituencies for the UK rather than any other subentity. -- Joolz 12:45, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Surely the best solution is to stop the automatic wikilinking of the Infobox and make users manaully wikilink to the counties. I think if you removed the auto-wikilinking then the only problem would be that the counties would be unlinked until we can get around to all the infoboxes and fix them up (using piping as needed). Creating another infobox is simply rediculous. Template:Infobox_Film certainly doesn't automatically wikilink.--Commander Keane 05:09, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Prettytable
I think that we should subst into the election box template to prevent any nasty surprises when people decide to play with the prettytable template. They managed to turn it into earlier today. JeremyA (talk) 21:09, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Future constituencies
As fellow boundary "anoraks" will no doubt know already, there are about 550 (ish) constituencies in place for the 2009/10 election - these are those agreed upon by the various Boundary commissions across the country. Whilst I am aware that Wiki is not a crystal ball, these are "set in stone" seats, and with the others soon to follow, I began to create a future constituencies page. This information is taken from the various Boundary Commission pages.

This is a "work in progess" but throws up some interesting points. One notable constituency chin-stroker for Wiki is Bermondsey and Old Southwark, currently Southwark and North Bermondsey. The boundaries will hardly alter, it's just the name, suggesting a new article could be seen as being unnecessary. I have already started a stub article for a brand new seat, namely Wyre and Preston North, which was done before I became aware of this project page - does this mean other pages can be created for new seats already, or should Wyre... be deleted until the election is called?

One final point - the electorate figures are those given by the Boundary Commmissions, who must work on those figures for the year 2000. These are bound to alter and move in time to come - I don't know if people would like to see up to date figures but I present the current figures with a big {sic}.

doktorb 18:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Now that we have final recommendations I think that this no longer qualifies as crystal ball stuff. For Sheffield, I started a Penistone and Stocksbridge (UK Parliament constituency) article. I think that there is general agreement that name changes coupled with only small boundary changes can be regarded as just name changes, so I created Sheffield South East (UK Parliament constituency) and Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough (UK Parliament constituency) as redirects to the current Sheffield Attercliffe (UK Parliament constituency) and Sheffield Brightside (UK Parliament constituency) articles—at the time of the next general election we can simple move the articles and reverse the direction of the redirects.   JeremyA (talk) 18:52, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Just an update - the future constituencies page is complete, with the next Boundary Commission update I think due in October. doktorb 13:50, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Swing
On Newbury by-election, 1993 there is a debate over whether it's only possible to show the swing between Labour and Conservative (for those not aware Newbury is a Liberal democrat-Conservative contested seat), a number of sources quote the 28.4% swing from Con to LD which we had originally, but now it's been changed to the Con to Lab (or maybe even Lab to Con, it's not clear) swing of -12, which to me doesn't make any sense. What are everyone elses views on this? -- Joolz 17:29, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. David has also changed the swing on a few other places, i.e. Livingston by-election, 2005 where the Conservatives polled a distant 4th place. I'm not sure where swing is defined as always being between Labour / Conservative, except at Swing (politics), which was largely written by David. The media commonly use it between the top parties in a particular seat, i.e the BBC often states swings to the SNP / Lib Dems. Vclaw 18:12, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
 * My understanding of swing has always been to calculate the swing between the two highest placed parties in that constituency. There may be some argument over who they are if say the third placed party overtakes the second placed party [I use the 'new' top two in this case], but in a seat such as Newbury where the top two remain the same then it should be pretty clear cut as to who is being used in the swing calculation. --New Progressive 21:02, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Hmmmm, after some checking, it imagine would appear that "conventional swing" in the UK is defined as Lab-Con swing. However, according to this, as long as you define the parties otherwise involved in the swing, this is completely acceptable. I would say we can accept this source as authoratitive as it comes from the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which Iis the defining authority as far as elections to it are concerned. --New Progressive 21:18, 1 October 2005 (UTC)


 * The one I find strange is when a new party appears in the top two. I don't think anything meaningful can be calculated as swing is aiming to show the shift in opinion since the last election.


 * Oh and is that stuff on the Parliament page a formal resolution of the Commons or whatever the website editor has put up? Timrollpickering 22:43, 1 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I have been confused as to what sort of swing calculation to make. There are two ways of doing it, which produce different results if there are more than two candidates. Butler swing is worked out on changes in percentage of two parties votes, using only the two party vote to calculate the percentages. It ignores other contenders. Steed swing is worked out on the basis of changes in two parties percentage of the overall votes. It is possible to do this calculation for any two parties contesting two successive elections, although British convention is to do it for Labour and Conservative with a positive swing being to the Tories and a negative one to Labour. This is not much use where one or both of the 1st and 2nd places in one or both of the pair of elections are held by any non-Labour and Conservative candidate. The convention is particularly pointless before 1918 when Labour was a minor party and before 1900 when the Labour Representation Committee had not come into existence..


 * My conclusion is that swing is only worth calculating if the same two parties are in the first or second places in both elections being considered. The method of calculation used should always be explained in a footnote. Personally I think swing is more trouble than it is worth and that the + or - percentages are a better way of following changes. --Gary J 03:24, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Conservative leader elections
I had a modest attempt at creating tables for Conservative Party (UK) leadership election, 1990, since we will undoubtable have a ballot in the next few weeks. I just subst: and then hammered the table we use for constituency elections. Anyone with more skill fancy improving the table/ creating a template/ informing my of an already existing template? Then we can add tables to the other pages with data from. Dmn  € &#1332;&#1396;&#1398; 11:05, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Stubs
Will start today looking through the UK Constituency stubs. There's some easy little tidy ups here and there. Could be worth trying to cut down on incomplete lists and what not too. I'll keep this page updated when needs be. On the Future Constituencies side of things, the next announcement, I think, from the English Boundary Commission is next year; I am going to the public meeting next month with regards to the Greater Manchester proposals. Again, updates when I get them. doktorb 12:43, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Constituencies in United Kingdom General Election
The Constituencies in the next United Kingdom general election page will be updated on Wednesday/Thursday when the Merseyside region's final recommendations is published doktorb 11:03, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
 * The next update for ^^^ will be on the 11 or 12 January when all but Greater Manchester is published as final recommondations by the Boundary Commission. Only NornIron and Gtr Manchester will remain after this 11 Jan update. doktorb | words 13:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)