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Policy discussion: Candidate/results boxes

Good evening all. I don't know if this has to become a formal RFC at this stage, and would welcome any guidance and advice on turning this discussion into, eventually, a formal addition to Wikipedia policy, if only for those of us here in the UK politics project if not wider afield.

I'll tag as many of you as possible into this post to encourage debate and discussion. Apologies if you don't wish to be involved. Apologies if I miss anyone out.

Context

I have been an active editor on Wikipedia for many years, over a decade. When I started editing 'properly' we had very few articles suffixed by "UK Parliament constituency" and with the help of many editors, some of whom may be amongst you in this discussion, much of the structure of these articles was born from our efforts in those early days. Indeed somewhere in the MOS is the instruction that "UK Parliament constituency" must be included in article titles, a decision made from a discussion such as this.

One perennial issue from the early days which carries on being a hurdle to cross is the candidate box, which ultimately becomes the results box, and how to deal with candidates being chosen in the run up to polling day, and for connected purposes. As it happens, 600+ days after the last one, two Westminster by-elections are up, and the two articles show very different sides to the candidate box problem.

Having seen much to-and-fro in one article in particular, I've decided to start this discussion and, hopefully, come to a decision about this perennial "magnet for all sorts" as I thought about calling it earlier.

The problems

In the UK, candidates rarely get chosen through US-style primaries, or through open lists or anything of the like. Indeed most Prospective Parliamentary Candidates are chosen by a small membership of each party in very internal, mostly secretive processes. For small parties and one-man bands, these are not really selections at all, per se. They are announcements, and largely these days, announcements made on Twitter or Facebook. The lack of any primary selection or formal process reduces the likelihood of there being WP:RS citations for candidate choices to near-as-dammnit to zero as it's possible to get.

Over the 10+ years I've been here, candidate selection becomes attractive for editors of all kinds - veteran and newbie, IP and admin, well-meaning and self-publicist alike. It's very frustrating in the run-up to a general election to have 600+ pages ripe for editors desperate to get their candidate on a Wikipedia page. Whether we like it or not, Wikipedia can be a cheap promotional tool for candidates, particularly independents and also-rans. They are eager to see their party and candidate name in an "official" capacity, and our candidate boxes look fairly "official", with party colours and a ballot paper order format. It's little wonder in the run-up to a high profile by-election, such as Hartlepool, that there are plenty of back-and-forth editing, amongst IPs and registered editors alike, over candidate selection and the candidate box.

I want to deal with two main problems. The first is the wider issue, that of the need to include a candidate box at all, prior to the publication of the Statement of Persons Nominated by the local authority. As I've been reminded recently, Wikipedia is not the place to rely on primary sources, but luckily for us, the SOPN is published by news sources and other websites. Now I'm a stickler for being accurate (I'm the editor most likely to change an "independent" candidate to "no label" or "no description" if their ballot paper description is blank, as candidates are permitted to do.) The SOPN, whilst a primary source, is our best place to go for clarifying exactly who has been nominated, for whom, and with what ballot paper description. (Remember that on the Register of Political Parties, each party can use any one of 12 alternative ballot paper descriptions, with no necessity to include the name of their party, which might require checking who exactly is being nominated if it turns out that "For Freedom of Speech" is the ballot paper description of UKIP or what-have-you.)

Some editors seem to be happy with having prose describe which party has nominated which candidate, or has indicated intention to nominate candidates, and have no candidate box at all until the publication of the SOPN. I would call this "the prose option."

Some editors seem to be happy with having an updated candidate box happening essentially "in real time" as and when candidates are chosen, and to have prose alongside this where required. I'd call this "the box option."

The second problem is sourcing. It's true that Wikipedia policy is the leading, stronger force here. We need reliable sources, and yes, they should not be primary sources. However, times are changing. Social media often feeds 'mainstream' news sources, and rarely do we get the candidate announcement in the newspapers before Twitter. IP editors and enthusiastic supporters often rush to articles to get their candidate in print, so to speak, falling foul of WP:NOTBLOG and NEWSTICKER and a few others more besides. We can blow hot and cold about the suitability of using social media sources, particularly if the FOO Party Twitter source is desperately trying to include Jane Smith as the FOO Party candidate regardless of any source outside themselves.

The straw poll

As the sourcing question can often be answered with Wikipedia's wider policy on such matters, this straw poll and wider discussion is more focused on the candidate box. Let's be clear. We are facing elections in May across hundreds of pages, scores and scores of candidate boxes in Wales and complicated candidate/results boxes in Scotland. We need to consider how to keep too much disruption at bay. This policy decision, if that's what it is, will help shape our policy on these articles now and in the future, including the next UK general election, which will happen with boundary changes, meaning a double-trouble of creating new constituency articles alongside dealing with candidate selection.

So over to you. We can have "the prose option", which would mean hosting no candidate box in an election/by-election article until the publication of the SOPN. We can have "the box option" which would allow for the candidate box to be hosted in an election/by-election article alongside prose where necessary.

The result of this would mean that all Parliamentary election articles - incorporating Westminster, Senedd, Holyrood and Stormont - would have this policy enacted upon them.

For background to this, I point you to our dual by-election articles, one which is much busier than the other. One is 2021 Hartlepool by-election and the other is 2021 Airdrie and Shotts by-election

Tagging editors

I draw the attention of the following editors to this discussion, please can you publicise it further if you can. @TSP:, @Bondegezou:, @Jdcooper:. @BitterGiant:, @Consgay:, @Chessrat:, @JDuggan:, @BrownHairedGirl:, @Galloglass:, @Timrollpickering:, @Warofdreams:, @JMPhillips92:

Discussion: "The Prose Option"

• Oppose. It just makes the information more difficult to find.--TrottieTrue (talk) 21:05, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• Support: Thanks to Doktorbuk for starting this discussion. I assume it is too late now for any decision to affect what happens in preparation for the May elections (seeing as the notices of candidates will be published later this week), but I agree that it will be beneficial for future elections to have some form of consensus on this. I have mainly stayed clear of election boxes so far this month, as I see no reason to add candidates on a piecemeal basis when we will soon have an authoritative source. However it is inevitable that news of candidate selections emerges before the SOPN is released, and it is beneficial from a reader's perspective to include candidates before they are officially confirmed. Election boxes without results in don't look great due to the blank spaces, and they can be confusing when there is an apparent omission from a major party, leading to editors adding placeholder rows without candidate names and so forth. With this in mind I would support having a prose summary as standard (which admittedly is an idea that has passed me by), as it is more space-efficient and will hopefully encourage editors to provide at least basic sourcing (a lack of which is a common pattern in pre-SOPN election boxes). PinkPanda272 (talk/contribs) 21:29, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose Having walls of text encourages bloat especially about the finer details of selection that frankly aren't encyclopedic or candidates who declare but then drop out early on and makes it hard to read the detail. Having a clear table setting out all the known candidates is much easier to read. Not every party contests every seat so absences are inevitable and those that haven't yet selected/declared can be covered by a note. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:40, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• Ambivalent. In principle I'd prefer running text until we have a clear sense of who is and is not standing, as it can get a bit misleading when there is a table (implying a bit of clarity and structure) that only has partial data. But I think it's going to be very practically challenging to implement a rule - the tables are so ubiquitous and so standard that people will expect them, and they'll get added quickly if they're seen to be missing. Trying to oppose that with policy seems like it would just cause a lot of friction. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:22, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• Support. The main reason I favour the prose option is that a candidate box looks to readers like an authoritative statement of who is running, when in fact until SOPN it is nothing of the sort, just plans and rumours, with gaps. It's no plus point to make the information easier to find if the information is not authoritative. We may understand that absences are inevitable and Party X simply hasn't confirmed their candidate yet, but readers using our articles in the meantime may well not appreciate that. When the SOPN is released, the candidacies become cold facts, and are then clearly best presented in a candidate box. The selection procedures, as in the case of the Hartlepool by-election article, require more contextual explanation than can reasonably be provided by a box. I respectfully disagree with Timrollpickering's argument that prose invites bloat, any more than any other article on Wikipedia. Bloat, where it appears, can easily be pruned, but surely many if not most articles will feature prose alongside the box anyway? Whereas candidate boxes are magnets for party activists to add Candidate X, often without sourcing or based on a Tweet. Jdcooper (talk) 01:50, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

• Ambivalent. Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia. That is, a set of prose articles about things and events. It is not Wikimanac, an almanac of facts. Too much editing of election articles focuses on tables and infoboxes rather than on prose. Articles about by-elections should be focused on why they are important and the significance of their results (when we get them). Something like 2019 Brecon and Radnorshire by-election is a good example. We should be encouraging high-quality content discussing the issues. That content also needs to follow Wikipedia policy and be well sourced, so we need a focus on reliable secondary sources and be wary of content added without sourcing, based on tweets, or based on original research. That all said, if you have a situation with reliable secondary sourcing for a large number of candidates, sometimes the clearest way to present that information is in a table. I think tables are added too quickly to by-election articles -- they seem pointless when there are one or two candidates only -- but they can be useful and I don't think we should privilege the SOPN (a primary source) over good secondary source reporting. I concur with concerns that a table can appear overly authoritative when its content may be partial, but I think we can tackle that by taking care how we introduce and populate a table. So, I recommend article prose first (which is the advice for writing infoboxes), a focus on good sourcing, and discouraging tables too early, but I do not oppose tables in all situations. I don't think we should have a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS saying "You can't have a table until the SOPN", but we could have a Project note with guidelines, which focuses on sourcing. Bondegezou (talk) 09:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

• Ambivalent. This is not a dichotomy, have both when prose adds something, such as a method of selection. I agree with virtually everything said below. The table (box) to avoid needless frictions should be warned off with a new template "Proposed Candidates" to warn editors that it is to be used, rather than one the old standard that clearly connotes the ballot is underway and screams "get your pencil ready".- Adam37 Talk 11:18, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Discussion: "The Box Option"

• Support this. The times are indeed changing, and Wikipedia is relied upon as a source of updated news by many. The local council won't be keeping a running track of the candidates, as they aren't official until the SOPN (which IMO is fine as a source). It's good to have one easily accessible place where those interested can see who has been selected. If things change, and said candidate doesn't end up on the SOPN, they can simply be deleted. I tried adding Brian Rose to the list of candidates for this year's London Mayoral election several months ago, but it was reverted, with the reasoning that there was no news source to verify it. I think it was just an announcement on his website. However, he clearly had declared his intention to stand, and is now on the article, with a local news website as the source. In any case, his name could have been deleted if it turned out he wasn't standing (and I don't think there is a SOPN yet, so there's no guarantee he'll be on the ballot paper). So I say yes, keep a rolling candidate box which can be updated as and when news is known. I do think that also having some prose about candidate choices is good though, where brief information on them can be included. Incidentally, I assume that the author of the original post, User:Doktorbuk, is the same person I've seen posting at Polling Report UK, a blog for UK elections polling - is that right, @Doktorbuk?--TrottieTrue (talk) 21:04, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
• @TrottieTrue: Yes indeed, though I've not posted there for many, many years! Nice that I'm remembered :) doktorb _words^deeds 23:47, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• @Doktorbuk: Thanks for confirming, I guessed so, as it's not the most common username. I didn't think I had seen your name on there lately. It's pretty quiet these days, but I enjoy reading the old threads from 2013 onwards which are still live on the site. That's probably where I remembered seeing your name, catching up on old posts. :) --TrottieTrue (talk) 23:53, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• What sort of box? As with my comments above, I think a table of candidates can be appropriate at times. However, my objection is to the habit on UK by-election articles to use an election results box, but with the votes received cells left blank. I don't know where this habit came from. If you look at other (non-by-election, non-UK) election articles, they generally do not have results boxes until there are results, although they may often have tables of candidates or parties. If we do have tables of candidates, they should be tables of candidates, not unpopulated results boxes. So not this, but OK with this. Bondegezou (talk) 09:10, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Conclusion

Hey all. The comments above are interesting and seem very well balanced between both options. Now this is not an RFC (and I'm not an admin) so I can't make an official ruling. But given that some kind of conclusion is required, I think it's best if we work on a compromise which balances all the concerns above. I'm also aware that there are currently "active" discussions at the Hartlepool by-election page and Scottish Parliament election page about candidates, party names, party inclusions and the like which point to a project in need of focus and more discussions like this one.

My view is, taking what has been said above, that we should move on with a general consensus that prose is preferred over a results box and that a "plain" box should be used over a "results box" in the run-up to polling day. I think it's Bondegezou who used the phrase "we can't have a results box without results" which stuck with me. The publication of the SOPN is key. And yes, the SOPN hosted on the local authority website is a primary source *of sorts*, only for our purposes it provides us with the candidates' names and their designation without any back-and-forth about who may or may not be independent etc.

I am conscious that we need to really have a good, long sit-down to audit our project for how we deal with things like this. I hope that people are happy with my conclusion, and that we can move forward with this in the months to come. doktorb _words^deeds 16:36, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Three Westminster by-election articles

Just a heads-up really, everyone. It's quite a busy year for us in this project, with national, regional, mayoral, and local elections all happening in May, and with three Westminster by-elections coming up.

I think we've all done very well to keep our heads up and minds focused on these articles. It's not easy.

1. . 2021 Hartlepool by-election is coming in a month's time. The editing has been quite back-and-forth recently because of the NIP candidate. SOPN is due at the end of the week so that should calm things down.
2. . 2021 Airdrie and Shotts by-election is very low profile, perhaps because of the Scottish Parliament elections happening the week before. Polling day is 13 May, so the SOPN should be due in a couple of weeks. With such little activity going on "in the real world" about this by-election I think this article could be a good one to really fashion into a decent state without too many distractions.
3. . 2021 Chesham and Amersham by-election could become very high profile. Polling day will be a while off yet, the former MP has only recently passed away. We could do well to put it on our watchlists NOW, as it might start to attract IP editors and the like if it becomes attractive to the media and commentators as a high-profile "test" of one kind or other.

Be safe and good, everyone, and good luck with the editing! doktorb _words^deeds 15:34, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Each UK constituency: Members of Parliament: re-election(s) to prevent the graphical bias of this section? Suggestion

The inspiration (the precedent)

Article: Battersea (UK Parliament constituency) as it was before 2017 then again, but better, throughout late Spring 2017. Section: Members of Parliament

The editors who carried this out/devised this

User:Bkissin & User:82.5.106.137

The revision to current format as is used across the board and the effect

Adding of re-election year, if any, to our lists of all MPs. Purpose: to encapsulate briefly and with due weight shown – for each election vied for – the local successfulness of each MP. By-product: in non ultra-safe seats it duly gives a fairer graphic to parties' (and hence 99% of MPs) respective electoral success, which the current colour blocks do not (spectacularly). This is better than when a very-long re-elected MP just is given one table line, perhaps amid a raft of other-affiliated others. I will call this the re-elections option. The present format is the simple list option.

Let's see what has happened to the extra column and rows that came in, work of User:Bkissin, in 2010. I duly removed it per the discussion of January 2017 in my talk. The rows (which would suffice; the numbering column stressing a new Parliament (of all things) was certainly over-the-top or totally US-style) detailed out how many re-elections the winner saw. I did so as did not have time to make the case here so conceded it for the time being and wondered what the eventual outcome(s) might be.

There followed, briefly, a more muted come-back and it held sway for a few weeks, passing by other notable editors, with a hint of success. Namely, on 21 April 2017‎ User:82.5.106.137 introduced a fairly lovely, but highly primitive, such as needing a two row sub-mergers, abbreviated, non-obsolete coding style of simply some more rows. These clarify instances of more elections won.

This was rejected: 7 June 2017 by‎ User:DavyCrockettJones. He hadn't discussed this. But nor had User:82.5.106.137 in his/her muted re-introduction. The later editor wrote "use same format as other articles". The same argument is made by two contributors in my talk page. So who made the original invention? It was by User:Bkissin on the 10th May 2010 and looked like this. I was struck by the beauty of Bkissin's style, yet I think it a bit grand – we don't assign numbers to parliaments in even broadsheets here unless being very quaint. I prefer even more what User:82.5.106.137 did. Though I appreciate the general, perhaps retentive abhorrence of different formats in politics studies though personally am a great fan of latitude and even format diversity. People with stunning intellect remain quick to assign different weights, based on years and not coloured-in visual effect. Most readers don't. We have a 'soundbite' culture and lack of intense maths-english analysis done on first reading (these days) all of which means many people would benefit from a starker User:82.5.106.137 style breakdown of the service of MPs. Was it multi-term; was it one term? These things matter.

The question is simple. Does adding a line showing the re-election(s) give better due weight to the MP, which would be a shame to do without (some countries do this, some don't on their wikipedias). Date wise the lists certainly appear in most cases, due to long-servers and short-servers very lopsided right now. The counter-argument may run that it somehow makes MPs who have achieved re-election somehow seem more important, even if a heavy table line is used only if the MP changes name. Can that be overcome with the stressed table row separator used for every constituency article, then we have a sort of bolts-and-braces fairness both ways.

Tagging editors

I draw the attention of the following editors to this discussion, please can you publicise it further if you can. @TSP:, @Bondegezou:, @Jdcooper:. @BitterGiant:, @Consgay:, @Chessrat:, @JDuggan:, @BrownHairedGirl:, @Galloglass:, @Timrollpickering:, @Warofdreams:, @JMPhillips92: I invite from everyone who wishes to consider this apparent slight bias (or finds none) a diversity of considered opinion.- Adam37 Talk 11:44, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Re-elections option

Elected/re-elected	Member		Party
1885		Octavius Vaughan Morgan	Liberal
1892		John Burns	Liberal-Labour
see Battersea North and Battersea South for 1918-1983
1983		Alf Dubs	Labour
1987		John Bowis	Conservative
1992
1997		Martin Linton	Labour
2001
2005
2010		Jane Ellison	Conservative
2015
2017		Marsha De Cordova	Labour
2019

• Support. My support is I hope not overbearing - I will do all the work but gladly assign (delegate) counties at will. But I support.- Adam37 Talk 12:32, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. Is there any reason why the first column is 'elected/re-elected' rather than 'election' (which is currently used in articles, is shorter, and thus doesn't extend the width of the column)? Also, is there any reason that this discussion hasn't been structured as a formal WP:RFC? Domeditrix (talk) 12:41, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

It stresses the change being made and will make most people think twice before just reducing back to a state of misleadingness in future years/decades.- Adam37 Talk 13:34, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

• Support albeit I feel that an alternative option to reduce table size, that could be used for constituencies that have been around for a long time, would be to include multiple elections on the same row (did an example below, in which I also fixed the election links to avoid redirects). Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 15:42, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Wonderful. That is far better! I today also spotted the early party to John Burns but in a rare moment of laziness (due to its age) am not today inclined to fix it in the article.- Adam37 Talk 16:28, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

• Object I HATE seeing this on constituency articles. It's cumbersome, it's too big, it's too long, and I know there is no page length but it causes too much scrolling for both laptop and mobile users. We know when there's a change in representation, that's when this section, and the detailed results below, make it clear. A long line of election years works in the US. It just looks goofy here. doktorb _words^deeds 17:00, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
• Conditional oppose. I can see the merit of listing all the elections, but it risks getting very bulky. I would support this if there was some way of having the table initially list only the change elections, but be expandable to list all the elections. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

Your point is fully taken. And acceded to.- Adam37 Talk 19:08, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

In regards to the table above. In regards to your comment below you are merely repeating yourself and have no support. Can you compromise with this approach, it's only fair.- Adam37 Talk 19:11, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

• Support in principle, as I like the idea of seeing how many times an MP was elected. I prefer the elections being listed line-by-line though (as above), rather than as "2005, 2010, 2015" etc, which looks more clunky to me.--TrottieTrue (talk) 21:07, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
• Conditional oppose. I like the idea in principle, but some tables will end up being extremely bulky, perhaps moreso than necessary. Unless this can be solved, I would prefer listing only elections where there was a change in MP or party affiliation, with other elections covered in prose. Domeditrix (talk) 19:14, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• Comment I didn't want to wade into this discussion when I was tagged (and I still won't). That being said, I feel like dredging up edits I made ten years ago to criticize a edit that consensus has since moved against, suggest that it was a US-style attempt (it wasn't. If anything, it was matching the MOS for Canadian ridings) to provide Wikipedia:Undue weight to re-elected officials (which again, it wasn't) seems a bit out of line and borderline WP:PA. The point was made ten years ago that such a system number parliaments would be difficult to determine, since there is little consensus on what constitutes the "first parliament" in the UK. As for the current proposals, I have no opinion. The only other wrench I would throw in the proceedings is that it will be difficult to make this change in much older, multi-member constituencies, especially where terms and members overlap. Bkissin (talk) 20:41, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose It is unnecessary it is intended as a brief overview. Furthermore, the layout is is not too clear in seeing who won which election, this overcomplicates the table. DukeLondon (talk) 10:43, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Re-elections option, variant suggestion

Elected/re-elected	Member		Party
1885, 1886		Octavius Vaughan Morgan	Liberal
1892		John Burns	Independent Labour
1895, 1900, 1906, Jan 1910, Dec 1910			Liberal-Labour
see Battersea North and Battersea South for 1918-1983
1983		Alf Dubs	Labour
1987, 1992		John Bowis	Conservative
1997, 2001, 2005		Martin Linton	Labour
2010, 2015		Jane Ellison	Conservative
2017, 2019		Marsha De Cordova	Labour

• Support This is clearer, concise, and logical. I will now be a little less brief about my objections to the first suggestion. doktorb _words^deeds 16:58, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
• Support Both options are preferable to the current system, which is confusing from a reader's perspective and could be perceived as undue weight. I prefer this option as it is more concise, but I suppose it comes down to whether we value a more accurate representation of each MP's length in office over length. PinkPanda272 (talk/contribs) 18:02, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
• Conditional oppose. I can see the merit of listing all the elections, but it risks getting very bulky in cases where the same MP had long service. I would support this if there was some way of having the table initially list only the change elections, but be expandable to list all the elections.
  For extreme examples, see Liverpool Scotland, where TP O'Connor won 13 successive elections, and Rushcliffe, where Ken Clarke also won 13 in a row. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

But you see that is an inherently interesting feature of the seat and not all elections are evenly spaced. Would number of times returned in brackets (or slim extra column) be more succinct? There is a great deal of fixation on brevity and without rehearsing oldest argument on that score too much, wikipedia is not short of space.- Adam37 Talk 08:17, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Given the Rushcliffe example, I've added the table of what the Rushcliffe table could look like under the proposed new format, below. I don't think it's too bulky. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 14:14, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is extremely ugly and far less readable than what currently exists. A downgrade. The Rushecliffe example illustrates just how messy this will end up being. Domeditrix (talk) 19:14, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Rushcliffe example table

Elected/re-elected		Member	Party	Notes
	1885, 1886, 1892, 1895, 1900, 1906, Jan 1910	John Ellis	Liberal
	Dec 1910	Leif Jones	Liberal
	1918	Rt. Hon. Henry Betterton	Coalition Conservative	Minister of Labour 25 August 1931 – 29 June 1934
	1922, 1923, 1924, 1929, 1931		Conservative
	1934 by-election, 1935	Rt. Hon. Ralph Assheton	Conservative
	1945	Florence Paton	Labour
	1950, 1951, 1955, 1959, 1964	Rt. Hon. Martin Redmayne	Conservative
	1966	Antony Gardner	Labour
	1970, Feb 1974, Oct 1974, 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2017	Rt. Hon. Kenneth Clarke	Conservative	Home Secretary (1992–1993) Chancellor of the Exchequer (1993–1997) Secretary of State for Justice (2010–2012) Father of the House of Commons (2017–2019)
	2019		Independent
	2019	Ruth Edwards	Conservative

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Chessrat (talk • contribs) 12:14, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

I think you have demolished the arguments for "good" "mobile phone" WP:LAYOUT and the tacit line of "too long, didn't read". These are in short countered with wikipedia has plenty of room and abhors dinky lists which are really of something else (times of very first election). We, the at least mildly studied, and all decent journalists, can identify or be hinted at the local incumbency factor along with the "leaning" of the particular area drawn up. We can also be assured of any short table of a "red, blue, red, blue" flip flop of four rows covering 70 years (coupled with typical random, electoral success, reselections, deselections, retirements) being a wee bit sized up or down in an albeit toned down (alas) more proportionate way (or slightly longer in such cases as my randomly shown Ms Flint example proves still as below, so it would seem). Further, the dates of intervening election(s) fought of course are unknown to all but the studious in UK politics, and even me (as not a politics graduate (I jest about pol. academics expected to know this)) as to by-elections).

Above it is quite evident that some have had more success than others, indeed, quite a lot more success. I wonder if we could put e.g. Shadow Sec. of State (twice),<br /> Minister (five times) with a technical-level footnote of which positions as that would prevent aggrandisement of the fact of being in the executive, something which is not at all directly determined by voters/the constituency. Likewise being "Father or Mother" of the House is no doubt shoved in to try and achieve a little more proportion in colour blocks. By the way if someone wants to find how much colours mean in politics there is a long history proving that case. I am sure there are some, on both classical wings, who do not like Mr Clarke in this example (for different reasons) but it does rather show he's someone the electorate voted in much more than once. I think that is no bad thing in a democracy and for truth which is easy to show.- Adam37 Talk 07:28, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

The consensus is to do this mild, easy-to-do-650-times change. We add, with commas, the Elected/re-elected data and change the header. Header to Elected/re-elected. This also gives fair weight to rapid by-elections (minds turn to Richmond Park lately) which are always far too dominant colour-wise anyway for my initial idea to curry much muster. i.e. would cover too much colour-wise and kind of have to. My original idea only worked if elections were evenly spaced, to be non-misleading. I will send invitations to do this work to those interested in their nearby counties and will launch into Surrey myself. A valient piece of work if I may say so.- Adam37 Talk 17:39, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. No good for mobile, and looks to be putting more information than necessary into a table. At this point it would be better in prose. Domeditrix (talk) 19:23, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• Procedural oppose. I can see that Adam37 means well, but Adam is now way out of line. It is completely unacceptable to one editor to pronounce a "consensus" on their proposal, when there has been zero feedback from anyone else and Adam didn't even ping any other participants in the discussion. And it is outrageous to start a mass-messaging spam campaign to 46 editors on the basis of that self-pronounced consensus.
  I have asked Adam to revert his spammed mass-messages, and if that doesn't happen promptly, I will escalate. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

Above. I said your argument was 'demolished' - why all of a sudden have you mobilised yourself and probably the guy above.- Adam37 Talk 19:21, 8 April 2021 (UTC) I will revert just until you can settle waters down a bit. And see FAIRNESS not MOBILE PHONE priority.- Adam37 Talk 19:21, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

@Adam37, you do not get to unilaterally pronounce that my argument is null and void. Your claim that I "mobilised" someone else is false, and pure ABF.
Please strike taht bogus allegation, and please back off fast from your aggressive and arrogant unilateralism. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

PS Adam37, I have no idea what you mean by FAIRNESS not MOBILE PHONE priority. But whatever it is intended to mean, it's a million miles from addressing the problems of your unilateralism and spamming. The fact that you wrote something so bizarre is further indication that you really need to step back and learn how en.wp consensus-formation actually works. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:43, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

It means all my words above are driven towards what I saw as UNDUE WEIGHT. I have four supporters. Sudden and far too late you have one. Just please try and see that mobile phone readability is one end of the spectrum, US/Canada is the other and we need something in between. Chessrat is more intelligent than I venture both of us. Can you just go along with his two tables above, Rushcliff is your in extremis setting. It is not representative but a modern record.- Adam37 Talk 20:36, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

@Adam37:, you write I have four supporters you a) misrepresent 4 editors; b) disrupt consensus formation by try to factionalise an evolving discussion into personal factions. I hope that nobody here has any supporters, and that everyone instead tries to evaluate the arguments.
As to undue weight, there is nothing undue about listing MPs by the years when they took office. And the whole mobile phone is some straw man invented by you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:58, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

@Adam37: For what it's worth, I've not been messaged about this discussion. It's one I've already been following, having first participated in it on the third of April. I didn't vote immediately as I usually prefer to wait to see what other arguments come in, because I like to consider them, but I saw through my watchlist that this was heading towards a hasty closure. Domeditrix (talk) 19:27, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

• Substantive oppose. This proposal is bulky and intrusive, and degrades the ability of this table to fulfil its core purpose.
  The table here is not some sort of potted history of the constituency. It is a brief list of the constituency's MPs, which allow the reader to identify the key points for each MP:

1. their name
2. their party
3. when their term of office began and ended

Those three crucial items are conveyed effectively by the current style of list, which lists only the elections when a new MP was returned.

This proposal damages that list, by burying the crucial change elections in a list of other elections where the seat didn't change hands. That makes the list less effective at conveying the core information. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:39, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Now you are changing tack as I wanted to press on. I even thought you would have come back with a reply to Chessrat's ideal style of table which I said "demolished your argument". Why are you changing your tune. It's antipathy isn't it really.- Adam37 Talk 19:48, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

@Adam37: my objection is for the reasons I explained at length. I have not changed my tine, and my objections are not personal. Please stop your disruptive assumptions of bad faith: either say something of substance, or say nothing. ---BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)

• Substantive oppose. This is very bulky and unnecessary. The table should give a brief overview not the whole history of the constiutency. This will also be hard to implement for older constituencies and would require a gigantic effort for something that would unnecessarily complicate the table. I opposed the other suggestion too, however, I oppose this suggestion more strongly. DukeLondon (talk) 10:51, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

A view that it's complicated is frankly one of dumbing down and quite radically. And a view that it's "gigantic" is wrong I could do it all myself.- Adam37 Talk 16:27, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

@Adam37, your tone continues to grate, as does your failure to read previous replies to you. There is no "dumbing down" in having a list of office-holders which links only to election in which they took office. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:36, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Agreed @BrownHairedGirl:. @Adam37: my response stands and I oppose it to a great degree, both of them. You have already claimed consensus to approve your changes there is none. Furthermore, it cannot be allowed for you to make the changes you propose through the back door. There needs to be more time to allow people to contribute, then the discussion needs to be closed with a summary describing conclusions which can be drawn (currently that both your proposed tables have been rejected, the Rushcliffe-style more so than the re-elected table proposal). These are major changes and any proposal needs approval, by a majority. Unilateral action cannot be taken in this endeavour. DukeLondon (talk) 18:56, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

• Strong oppose This is horrible and unnecessary, in an article that is about an area of electoral geography. The Rushcliffe changes should have been reverted at the time they were made. MapReader (talk) 05:52, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

This obviously fails to read the whole string. As almost everyone, apart from top barristers and judges, does these days. This was an extreme illustration put by an opponent and Chessrat came up with this idea of commas being used. Rushcliffe has never been in that format. It's a hypothetical. And an extremely bad non-representative one. After all look how overbloated Ms Flint's tenure is, hardly great there in real implementation.- Adam37 Talk 07:46, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

On the contrary, you are missing the key point, which is that all of those job titles on the Rushcliffe constituency page are unnecessary bloat that need editing out of that page. It’s an article about a geographical electoral area - the jobs that its representatives happen to have held are properly covered in their biographical articles. That Rushcliffe article, as it currently is, is a mess and needs restoring to the usual format. The suggested elaborated version above is even worse. MapReader (talk) 12:10, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

@MapReader I did miss that critique and agree. However the motive I would ascribe to is is the reasons of colour proportion at length explained above. To all other readers: I didn't write the last two tables above (but adore them). I wrote the first option above that.- Adam37 Talk 15:10, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

It remains my view that the status quo is probably the best option. But let’s see what others think; in my experience an editor who feels the need to respond to every single comment is often over-invested in a particular proposal and is better standing back and seeing where the discussion goes. MapReader (talk) 15:21, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Simple list option

Example of the status quo:

Election		Member	Party	Notes
	1918	James Walton	Coalition National Democratic
	1922	Thomas Williams	Labour	Shadow Minister of Agriculture (1951–1959) Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1945–1951)
	1959	Richard Kelley	Labour
	1979	Michael Welsh	Labour
	1983	Martin Redmond	Labour	Died January 1997; no by-election held due to imminent general election
	1997	Caroline Flint	Labour	Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (7 October 2011 – 14 September 2015) Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (8 October 2010 – 7 October 2011) Minister of State for Europe (3 October 2008 – 5 June 2009) Minister of State for Housing and Planning (24 January 2008 – 3 October 2008) Minister of State for Employment (28 June 2007 – 24 January 2008) Minister for Yorkshire and the Humber (28 June 2007 – 24 January 2008) Minister of State for Public Health (5 May 2005 – 28 June 2007)
	2019	Nick Fletcher	Conservative

Rushcliffe table above style agreed

This is now – on total balance – agreeable to me and the best way forward among all our minds.- Adam37 Talk 17:45, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

• No, @Adam37, it has NOT been agreed. Nobody except you supported it. Please back off and slow down and stop this unilateralism. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:21, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

It wasn't even me who came up with that style. Not at all. And it has DoktorB supporting it too apparently.- Adam37 Talk 19:23, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

@Adam37, that is demonstrably false. As of now, DoktorB has not posted in the section where you proposed your "Rushcliffe" variant.
You excessive haste and poor judgement is wasting a lot of other editor's time, as well as your own. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:47, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

• I'm not sure how you've come to such a swift conclusion, especially since the number of responses is in single figures, and it seems that editors were still debating the merits of your proposal. There isn't any deadline, so it would be best to wait for more editors to express opinions. A good way of doing this would be to format it as a proper RfC. Thanks, PinkPanda272 (talk/contribs) 21:28, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• I am coming late to this discussion, but I was the editor that led the discussion on the format of the election tables themselves. The purpose of the election result tables within these articles is to set out the results of all the elections for that constituency; the purpose of the ‘list of MPs’ table at the top is to detail the history of the constituency’s representatives, presented in summary list form, allowing a quick click-through for readers actually looking for biographical information on the MP. This also allows the MPs’ full title to be shown; clutter we agreed not to include within the results of each election, which are based on Commonname. The two things that strike me about all of these proposed changes are, firstly, they all make the information being presented longer and, secondly, the additional utility appears marginal, since all of the information being added is either already in the article, or is just one click away. In particular I would strongly oppose having the voluminous ‘notes’ section, which is simply going to fill up with biographical detail that doesn’t belong in articles about areas of electoral geography. The ‘Rushcliffe table’ is horrible, and had I seen it at the time it replaced the clear and simple previous format, I would have reverted the edit as adding unnecessary clutter and adding information beyond the scope of the article. I also oppose those options that list the same MP’s name over and over, or list out all the election years in a single box. Of the options above, the least worst one is the so-called re-elections option, but the status quo has the advantage of taking up less space and hence presenting the information most concisely. I’d question whether there is sufficient, or indeed any, extra utility here to justify the amount of work, disruption and potential for mistakes that undertaking such a large amount of change would involve? MapReader (talk) 05:36, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

• I haven't commented so far, but after catching up on this discussion - for what it's worth, I think the "minimal format" (the old consensus one) seems preferable. I agree with MapReader that it primarily is used and intended as a very quick index of names/parties, and it works very well for this purpose. Because terms are continuous, I don't think it's particularly necessary to list all the elections/re-elections that intervened.

If we do, then I think one-line-per-election might be marginally preferable, even if it does tend to more vertical whitespace. For seats with a history back into the nineteenth century, there's an increased chance of a section with two-member lists, and it feels like the comma approach would break down if we tried to apply it to these tables.

However, the versions with notes seem very cluttered and I would prefer we avoid them. Seats with a single very notable MP tend to highlight this up front in the lead section, or discuss it in a narrative section, or both (see eg Finchley, Sedgefield, Bolsover), and I think this works better than trying to do it in a table. It's more flexible. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:58, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

• @Andrew Gray, the point that Adam37 consistently misses is that the section under discussion is a list of MPs. It is not a complete summary of the constituency's history, just a simple list of names and parties and dates of taking office. So Adam's concerns about undue weight are misplaced: the list correctly mentions only the elections when a new MP took office.

Like you, I think that one-line-per-election would be better than clumping a bunch of elections on one line. But it would add a lot of visual bulk, and thereby make the list much less useful. As I suggested before, I could support a one-line-per-election format if the table initially displayed as a list only of change elections, but had a single show/hide button to allow display of all elections. However, I don't think that the current technologies allow that.

In Ireland where Dáil Éireann has had multi-seat constituencies since 1921, I devised back in 2009 a set of templates to facilitate display of the list of TDs: {{Irish TD table TD with party link}} etc, which you can see in use on e.g. Mayo (Dáil constituency)#TDs. In those PRSTV elections it is rare for none of a constituency's seats to change hands, but the convention has been to list all elections, even if there is no change ... because no change is such a rarity that omitting it would be confusing. That's very different to the UK's FPTP elections, where at any given election (except maybe 1945) most constituencies make no change. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:48, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Unilateral action being taken

As is evident with regards to the discussion above regarding @Adam37: he has repeatedly spoken in a discourteous manner to those who oppose his proposals, with regards to the tables, having made two proposals, both of which so far is being rejected. The user has claimed to have consensus to implement these changes (in some instances stating that support has been given from users who have not said they support his proposals). It is evident from an arithmetic perspective, no consensus has been established. Yet, Adam37 has even gone so far as to spam users asking them for help in altering the tables.

We (the participants of this project) may need to take action if Adam37 goes ahead with these changes where there is no consensus (despite his claims there is). As the user is trying to bypass this wikiproject and unilaterally make significant changes to articles.

Dispute resolution may be needed to prevent Adam37 from going ahead with changes with no consensus. It is particularly dangerous as the user has taken steps of implementing these changes and is absolute in believing that consensus has been reached (however, it clearly has not been).

The participants of this project and the wikiproject itself is under threat. DukeLondon (talk) 19:09, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

No I'm not. This is pathetic complaint and unjustified. I quickly reverted the alleged "spam" and there was one pending objector. I didn't realise that person had to be placated. Now several more are appearing. If this is just rallying around someone with more popular arguments then so be it.- Adam37 Talk 08:00, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

@Adam37: For what it's worth, making changes such as these (which affect such a large number of articles) usually require a properly-formatted WP:RFC — though a thread like this is fine for spitballing and taking a temperature check prior to an RFC, which I had assumed was happenening here. In an RFC, consensus is not purely numbers-based, and usually editors will have at least two weeks to contribute. An admin, not one involved in the discussion, will essentially arbitrate and close the discussion. Not only have you tried to implement a major change without an RFC, but you've justified it on a numbers-based consensus, given inadequate time, and closed the discussion yourself. This is what has riled people up. I had assumed that, given your account was created in 2007 and that you have thousands of contributions to your name, that you would already know these rules. Domeditrix (talk) 08:29, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I rarely delve into an RFC. I don't like what frequently becomes office politics and virtue signalling. The only mistake I thought I made was not checking the Variant including its in worst-case example in Rushcliffe as kindly fleshed by Chessrat - who ingeniously came up with the commas, the Variant - had actually had won over the objector. I see now you have to allow time for other people to give their views. Perhaps that was motivated out of keenness to avoid all uneven connotation and graphics particularly, and genuine love of the elections, even if they are not expected to be close. I can see that some people are perceiving my slimmed down resurrection of a CAN. style and the Variant as though it were a virus, whereas I am of the view they are a vaccine.- Adam37 Talk 14:54, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

P.S. I gave the sole objector the opportunity to reply, which is full grace and courtesy and she did not. I went along with BOLD and then thought we had complete agreement to what I saw as only fair and logical. Obviously I stand corrected.- Adam37 Talk 08:03, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

@Adam37, that is untrue, in several respects. You did not give me time to reply, because you did not notify me of your revised proposal. I was unaware of it until you spammed a msg onto my talk page. Your spam did not even link to the discussion where conensus had allegedly been achieved, and when I found this discussion again I found that you had unilaterally pronounced that consensus had been achieved. That to was blatantly false: by the time you posted that your bulky solution was agreeable to me and the best way forward among all our minds[1], there were no responses to your Ruschliffe table.

Instead of asking me for a response, you falsely claimed that my point is fully taken. And acceded to[2]. That was untrue because I had clearly stated that I would support this if there was some way of having the table initially list only the change elections, but be expandable to list all the elections[3], and your proposal did not include expandability.

I tried at the outset be gentle on you, and to assume that your conduct was a good faith misunderstanding of the consensus-forming process. I encouraged you to revert your spamming (which you did) and to resume discussion of the substantive issues. However, you are still digging yourself in deeper, by not just defending your errors, but by repeatedly alleging misconduct by those who oppose your proposal and/or your unilateral closure.

This is all becoming a huge timesink, and is well down the path to needing escalation to stop your disruption. You badly misjudged the balance of opinion, you were were over-hasty in thinking that discussion had finished, you screwed up by self-closing the discussion, you screwed up mightily by spamming. That's all done now: the spamming is undone, and the discussion has re-started. So at that this stage the best option for you is to simple apologise for your errors, and resume substantive discussion. OTOH, if you persist in trying to blame others for your screw-ups, and in particular if you continue to misrepresent others, then @User:DukeLondon|DukeLondon]] is right that action will be needed.

I have written many warnings to Adam, and this will probably be my last. If there is more of this, I may escalate without further warning and seek a topic ban on Adam37. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:54, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Most of you need to slow down, ironically. As I did go too fast so you have apology for that. Rushcliffe table is not a separate table, it's an expounding of the worst case scenario made by Chessrat. It's done for his variant table. The fact I prefer that is probably reflection of some halcyn vision we could easily compromise on that being the way forward. Compromise is not always easy when people have read hundreds of these articles as we all have and then get used to a certain way of thinking.- Adam37 Talk 10:03, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Sticking with the status quo has a lot to be said for it, when there isn’t an obvious problem to be solved. Why impose major change on a significant number of articles, generating a huge amount of work, when editors’ attentions would be much better spent keeping WP up to date with the ever-changing political world, as well as addressing the many existing parts of our Encyclopedia where there is so much improvement work needing to be done? MapReader (talk) 12:55, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Dates of birth for politicians and an IP User

It seems there was recently a debate (see archived discussions) about whether to use “raw data” from the Parliament website as a source for MPs dates of birth. An unregistered IP user has been obsessively removing the dates of birth for the 2019 intake of MPs, presumably where these *appear* to come from the raw data or even just because they are “unsourced”. The concerning thing is that User:Andrew Gray noted in these discussions that 500 of the 650 MPs have DOBs which come from the Parliament raw data. That doesn’t bother me, but some users, particularly the IP address, might object. Will the IP User go through the 500 and delete their DOBs? I hope not. For some reason, they seem to be mostly monitoring the new intake, who are often missing a DOB. Pre-2019 MPs have DOBs which don’t appear to be directly referenced (including the prime minister, but does a fact like this always need a reference?).

I added dates (month and year) for some new MPs from their Companies House profile, but these were swiftly removed and the user left a message on my talk page telling me they were primary sources and therefore unacceptable.

I then added a number of DOBs to articles using Politics.co.uk as a reference. There’s a possibility that this site has borrowed heavily from the Wikipedia articles, including the DOBs, but it could be the other way round. Now the IP user, presumably watching all these articles on new MPs, has raised the reliability of Politics.co.uk as a source here. They’ve been quite abusive in their discourse with other users.

I’ve also had two of my edits reverted by the user this week. One was Christian Wakeford, an edit in which I largely reorganised the article, as the content was a bit jumbled. Then my edit on Nigel Evans was reverted, in which I had tidied up the article by moving his court case to a new section in the article, instead of having it hidden under “personal life”. I undid both reverts. Funnily enough, Evans’ DOB has no direct reference in the article, though neither does Joe Biden’s!

I suggest that the IP user is mostly monitoring the DOBs for the new intake. Incidentally, one of their accounts had a temporary block on it, so they have caused problems before. The user’s IP has been located in Hackney, Rotherhithe, Shadwell, Manchester and Washington (Sunderland/Gateshead). As some of their edits have been on Poplar and Limehouse, I’d hazard a guess they’re in Shadwell. I also wonder if their editing is biased in some way - a Conservative activist, maybe? Their activity makes me think all users ought be registered in order to edit, but I think that debate has sadly gone nowhere before. They’re clearly a bit of a nuisance though, and rather uncivil.

Maybe MPs’ articles should be automatically protected, so only extended confirmed users can edit them?

The issue of DOBs for newer MPs remains open though. I think the only “reliable” source for many dates is The Times Guide to the House of Commons. Unfortunately, that book is pretty expensive, and not even stocked by my library. A contact of mine did provide me with several DOBs from his copy of the book. I’ve asked him to help with other missing dates, but does no one else here have it? The book is actually missing some DOBs, so I wonder if those will remain absent from the articles indefinitely... I hope not.

It was pretty hard work checking the 2019 intake and adding DOBs from Politics.co.uk, so I’d rather not have all that undone. Adding or would be preferable to removing the dates outright, IMO. I personally don’t see the need to have every MP’s DOB sourced with a reference footnote. We could do with a freely available reliable website which listed such information... Who’s Who is generally good for previous intakes of MPs, but their data is sparse for the 2019 group, it appears. TrottieTrue (talk) 12:04, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

I cant see anything wrong with using reliable primary sources for facts like a date of birth. MilborneOne (talk) 13:20, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree. I don’t see what’s wrong with using something like Companies House, which is freely and publicly available. My contact with the Times book has other DOBs not in the book, I believe, probably obtained from public records, but these wouldn’t be allowed as a source on Wikipedia, even though I’m sure I have seen Ancestry and Free BMD used as references here. And there’s been a discussion about using the House of Commons data for MPs’ dates of birth, in which it was pointed out that the data is accurate to the best of their knowledge, and it’s not just any old source, it’s a database on the UK Parliament website. Some editors are even against using the dates if they were published on the MPs’ profiles at the Parliament website. It just seems petty, a bit like the over-zealous way that every Daily Mail reference has been removed by a particular editor.—TrottieTrue (talk) 14:41, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

It seems that some articles do still use the Parliament Data Services link, so I hope those references won't be purged. The previous discussions seem to keep referring to the "raw data", which I think essentially means an XML webpage from which the Parliament Data Services search facility draws its information (I can't even see any dates of birth on that page, so maybe it's more complicated than simply searching the text). I think it's in a beta mode, and clearly something that only those with the technical know-how can use: it isn't readily accessible to members of the public. It certainly couldn't be described as "user-friendly". I emailed the House of Commons website to ask if they could publish the dates of birth. The reply which came back said:

"Thank you for your recent email in which you asked for the dates of birth of MPs to be added to their biographical pages.

I have sought advice from a colleague regarding your enquiry and have been informed that the dates of birth that are available for MPs on the parliament website have been obtained with the consent of the MP in question.

I was also advised that in a number of cases, the MP will not consent to having their date of birth published on the site and so consequently it is not published.

Finally, my colleague also mentioned that they are not allowed to use data from public sources to enter on the parliamentary website without the consent of the MP.

I hope that this is useful."

The response has been trimmed to show the relevant bits. I've replied asking where the dates of birth can actually be found. The House of Commons Enquiry Service must be aware that the DOBs have been published by them online in a roundabout way, since that's what they seem to be referring to.--TrottieTrue (talk) 18:11, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Remember the discussions at WP:RSN here and WP:BLPNhere are taking place too. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 18:30, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but those are Archive discussions, so I didn't want to add to them. Although the debate clearly is still ongoing.--TrottieTrue (talk) 21:00, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Had another reply from the House of Commons:

"I have again sought guidance from a colleague and it appears that the information I previously provided was incorrect, so please accept my apologies for this misinformation. Information regarding MPs ages are not available on the website.

However, you may find the following House of Commons Library papers useful:

House of Commons Trends: The Age of MPs

Social background of Members of Parliament 1979-2019

I hope that this is useful and again please accept my apologies for the error in my earlier email."

[Email trimmed]—TrottieTrue (talk) 12:08, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Prior discussion at here and here recently reached a consensus on this. Let's stick to that. Bondegezou (talk) 08:29, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure you could call those discussions a "consensus". Some agree the Parliament data isn't a RS, some don't. Perhaps those who prefer not to use the Parliament data are larger in number, but it isn't a formal consensus. The fact is, the vast majority of incumbent MPs following the 2019 election (ie. those already in Parliament before) have Wikipedia DOBs extracted from the Parliament data, according to what I've read here. Although without fastidiously checking each one, we don't truly know how long those DOBs have been there, or what the source was. It doesn't seem to be the norm for WP DOBs to be immediately followed with a reference, but new additions for the 2019 intake seem to have attracted a higher level of scrutiny. It looks like the Parliament data is intended to be found by running a query at UK Parliament - Members' Names Data Platform, but it clearly isn't designed for the average member of the public to use. Personally, I see no issue with using data published by the UK Parliament as a source, but it clearly seems to cause disputes. The only other RS for now that I'm aware of is The Times Guide to the House of Commons.--TrottieTrue (talk) 17:27, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

There was an extensive discussion. Most editors seem happy with how things ended, which was not to consider this an appropriate source. I am happy to reiterate my position from those discussions again here, which is that we have a policy on this at WP:DOB and we have to follow that, and that means we err on the side of caution and do not use this source. Bondegezou (talk) 18:27, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

There wasn't really a formal consensus though, even if a number of editors seem to be "happy" with it. I certainly don't agree with them, although I accept that they object to the UK Parliament's data being used. Granted, it's not published in a very obvious place, but I don't think the UK Parliament website could be regarded as anything other than a "reliable source" for this info. It's generally the norm for frontline politicians to have DOBs on their article, but few "widely available" publications actually carry it. But how long before the DOBs are systematically removed from ALL current MPs without an inline reference to the source? I just worry that's where this kind of overzealous removal of DOBs will lead. And in reply to your comment at one of those discussions, many people would use WP as an "almanac of birthdays"; there's nothing to suggest they shouldn't.--TrottieTrue (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

If DOBs are removed from ALL current MPs without an inline reference to the source, then good, that is a correct application of WP:V, WP:BLP and WP:DOB. Those are policies. We have to follow them. Bondegezou (talk) 20:17, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

But then are we going to go around removing the DOBs for every living person? Even the likes of Joe Biden don't have inline citations for their DOB. It seems excessive to me, and ultimately creates more work for other editors. You may think that a DOB is the "least interesting thing" about a person, but others like myself would disagree. We don't have to follow those policies to the exact letter - which, in any case, are usually open to interpretation. I think knowing the exact age of our public representatives is important; they put themselves up for scrutiny when they enter the profession. Hence why no less a publication than Who's Who includes it in their entries. The published sources which list an MP's DOB are actually few: Who's Who seems to have the older ones, but it's not so good at the newer intake. There is also a book by Iain Dale and Jacqui Smith which has profiles of Women MPs, including dates of birth. The Times Guide to the HOC is expensive though. I'm hoping to get access to a copy of it somehow, to add some of the missing dates.--TrottieTrue (talk) 19:15, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi there. WP:V, WP:BLP and WP:DOB. In your own words, explain why these are not being violated. Go.

The IP user who posted the above unsigned comment is the subject of a post at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.--TrottieTrue (talk) 17:54, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

The WP:DOB arguement seems a little odd. Per that guideline If a subject complains about our inclusion of their date of birth, or the person is borderline notable, err on the side of caution and simply list the year. I would argue that no MP is "borderline notable", that just leaves personal objection. In any case, the WP:DOB issue can only be tackled on a case by case basis. You cant apply a blanket notability ruling on all MPs. Likewise MPs can only object on a case by case basis. One MP objecting does not mean we should remove them all. If WP:DOB does apply for any of them, just use the year. At no point does WP:DOB advocate not recognising year of birth, even if we dont include the specific date.

In conclusion, WP:DOB does not apply in a discussion as broad as this.

From the point of view of WP:BLP and WP:V: All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by an inline citation to a reliable, published source. Contentious material about living persons [...] should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.

This is why Biden's DOB isnt sourced, combining the above with WP:COMMONSENSE.

I think that it is reasonable to follow WP:IAR and use primary sources for year of birth, and leave the date for secondary sources.
SSSB (talk) 18:24, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, SSSB, for bringing some WP:COMMONSENSE and clarity to this discussion. Of course Biden's DOB doesn't need an inline citation, unless it was seriously being disputed. I was using that as an example to make my point, as clearly not all notable politicians need an inline citation for this information. I think a few WP editors have become overly bureaucratic when it comes to publishing DOBs for currently serving MPs, pointing to guidelines which supposedly back up these "policies", when it's far from clear-cut. Essentially, certain users just seem to bamboozle others with these WP guideline pages, which are wordy and full of jargon. You've rightly pointed out that a Member of Parliament in the UK is clearly not "borderline notable". They are aware of the extra level of scrutiny they will receive when they sign up for the job. The objection to "primary sources" for a DOB is, frankly, ridiculous. The IP user (and others, sadly) have taken an overly literal interpretation of the BLP guidelines. It really isn't productive to remove every single unreferenced DOB from a currently serving MP, although the IP user in question only seems to have taken this interest in those who were elected in 2019, not the hundreds who were already elected and have DOBs with no inline citations. User:Andrew Gray has commented that those DOBs came from the UK Parliament - Members' Names Data Platform (I believe). If the UK Parliament itself isn't a RS for such data, I don't know what is.--TrottieTrue (talk) 19:02, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

It's a pity that both the full list and individual records don't even appear to contain the dates of birth any more. Anyway this discussion is pointless, as per WP:CONLOCAL a discussion on a Wikiproject page cannot decide to disregard WP:BLPDOB and WP:BLPPRIMARY. FDW777 (talk) 17:14, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

In that case we can just start a WP:RfC.
SSSB (talk) 08:53, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

You'll have to start an RfC about WP:BLPDOB because an RfC here would still be a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, which cannot override a general policy. Bondegezou (talk) 10:03, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I was alerted to discussion from stuff at ANI. I have to say, I'm deeply concerned that editors are suggesting we ignore BLP. That is unacceptable. If you want to change BLP policy via a properly advertised RfC, that's up to you, but we cannot ignore BLP policy for a specific group of subjects just because members of some WikiProject are unhappy with the result.

Also the e-mail above is very interesting. It confirms a fear I had since December. Some MPs are evidentially unhappy with their DOBs being public like that. It's a concern BLP policy explicitly recognises. It's why we require the information be widely published or published in a source linked to the subject. Although the database may be linked to the subjects in a very roundabout fashion, it seems clear that some subjects have tried to avoid the information being properly published because of their concerns. Frankly even if the info is ever published on the parliament website I'm unconvinced we should use it, since it's fairy disconnected from the MPs themselves and they may have limited say in it being published and I also question if simply being published on the parliament website counts as widely published although ultimately it's pointless discussing that when it has happened.

As people who've chosen to enter into public service and be subject to scrutiny, obviously it's easily possible other sources may choose to publish the information and so it may become widely published. If that ever happens then sure we can include the information. However the point remains, until this has happened we should not have the information.

Please remember that when it comes to BLPDOB, our policy is not simply that the information is correct but also, as I said before, that the information is widely published. I.E. effectively that we're not contributing to it being out there by publicising it. We can be sure DOB information is true, but if it isn't widely published we don't include it. (This also applies to other stuff like full names.)

Nil Einne (talk) 13:53, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

P.S. I don't understand why people are claiming Joe Biden's DOB lacks an inline citation. I checked and this simply isn't true, at least in the current version. [4] It does have an inline citation to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress [5].

It is true it lacks an inline citation in the lead but that's a different point. Although not well articulated in BLP, the MOS (MOS:LEADCITE) and possibly some other guidelines or policies already make clear that it's often acceptable not to cite something in the lead if it's cited in the body. There's no IAR here, it's simply well established part of our policies and guidelines. As a BLP/N regular, if someone complains about a DOB or something else being uncited I check to see if it's somewhere else in the article as it generally should be, and if it is if it has a citation. If it lacks a citation in the body as well as the lead, then I will normally remove the information. (Oh there's also the case where the info is cited in the infobox only, in that case I will normally ensure the citation also appears in the body or lead.)

As I understand it the problem here isn't that the information is cited in the body but not the lead, but that it either lacks any citation, or only has an unacceptable one such as the parliamentary raw database. (I have not looked into politics.co.uk, but I do have strong concerns about it inline with what others have expressed.) I mean realistically, if that was the problem, at worst all we would have to do would be to make the citation appear in the lead as well.

BTW the use of the US Congress Biographical Directory in Joe Biden is interesting, but from what I understand that sort of info tends to be widely distributed and used in the US, and in any case I'm sure it would be trivial to find Joe Biden's birthdate in 100 different reliable sources. While I'm sure it's similarly trivial for some MPs, this doesn't seem to be the case for all of them since it's why there's still such a problem 3.5 months later. Also any comparison with the UK situation is moot as long as we only have the raw data rather than it being explicitly published on the UK parliament website as I said when raising my concerns about how to handle it if they do so.

Nil Einne (talk) 14:19, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

"Although the database may be linked to the subjects in a very roundabout fashion" - this is a misnomer. The information appears to have been provided by the subjects, and the database is maintained by the body responsible for their employment on a public site (albeit one not designed to be user-friendly). It does look like some new MPs are avoiding having their DOBs published, but they can't expect the information to remain secret indefinitely; it seems unrealistic to me. I don't think the Times book is missing many dates. The "raw data" now seems to lack the DOBs anyway. "Frankly even if the info is ever published on the parliament website I'm unconvinced we should use it" - I think that's going too far. It's required that a source be linked to their subject. The UK Parliament itself would seem to be a RS for their DOBs. I can't see the info being added at the moment though. The emails which were sent to me by the HoC state that they would only publish information like that with the consent of the MP. It's not as if a source connected to the MP themselves is automatically going to meet the standards of verifiability. That can be taken to mean an MP's website. It doesn't mean the information is reliable, just because they've published it. I'm not sure why it wouldn't be considered a "primary source", though I have no problem with those being used. There are limited publications or sources which are going to include an MP's date of birth. I can't even envisage a national newspaper publishing it, unless the DOB can be inferred from a list of birthdays on a day. I don't think being "widely published" is a necessary criteria. I think it's important this information is "out there" when it comes to national politicians. Other editors are interested.

Regarding Joe Biden, I didn't notice that the main body of his article had an inline citation for his DOB. Most UK MPs won't be important enough to warrant an article that long, and I don't think it's necessarily standard practice to include a DOB in the main body for short articles. The likes of Joe Biden, Tony Blair and Priti Patel have long lead sections. A relatively new MP (or one who hasn't served in one of the great offices of state) won't have a long lead section, so including the DOB in the lead and the main body would look repetitive. Do we really have to go through the hundreds of sitting MPs to check that their DOB has an inline citation? That seems excessive to me, if no one is objecting to it being there. Most of the dates will be in Who's Who - but adding them to hundreds of MPs would be very time-consuming, when the information is widely accepted. And I'm not surprised you find the use of the US Congress Biographical Directory "interesting". I think for now, the existing DOBs should be left alone, whilst those MP articles missing a DOB can have the info added as and when an RS is found.--TrottieTrue (talk) 00:45, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Editor deleting information

A heads up for project members. Editor BrendaJones54 is deleting information from UK constituency articles without explanation or reason. Might need to be looked at, I can't see why the details are being removed. doktorb _words^deeds 03:45, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

She’s doing the right thing. There is bloat in some of these tables that has been added wrongly; this relates to an existing discussion at UK politics talk. MapReader (talk) 05:44, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm removing the 'information' as it's cluttering the table and i'm making the table's match similar articles that haven't been bloated with irrelevant stuff. BrendaJones54 (talk) 06:32, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Leader of the Labour Party (UK) tables with tenure

Could the table at Leader of the Labour Party (UK)#Leaders of the Labour Party (1906–present) include the duration of their terms? I personally think is of interest. A Guardian article a few years ago pointed out all the Labour leaders who Jeremy Corbyn had been leader longer than. It would be interesting to put it in context like that. As in List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom#From 1721, I think it would look good to have the duration in years and days below the leader's term of office dates, spanning those two columns.
I was thinking of having a Sub-heading 1 below the table: "Leaders of the Labour Party (1906–present) by tenure", similar to List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom by length of tenure, with the list ranked by how long they were leader. This way, the separate terms of Harold Wilson and Harriet Harman (etc) can be added together.
I've tried doing this myself, but I don't know much about WP tables. @Andrew Gray: can you help please? Good to see that Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom) has a list by length of tenure - although I'd rather it used the "years, days" format rather than just "days".--TrottieTrue (talk) 01:43, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

I thought it made more sense to have Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom)#List of Leaders of the Opposition by length of tenure showing years and days, rather than just days. However, the problem is that some leaders of the opposition served more than once, and I don't know how to combine multiple dates for a calculation. So in those cases, I just wrote "x years, y days" instead. That still sorts, except when it comes to leaders who served for less than a year. Their service is "x days", and this doesn't sort properly. I can change it to "0 years, x days", but that doesn't look right to me, and the tenures of less than a year which are calculated end up sorted separately. Can someone help it get sorted correctly please? There must surely be a way to sort manually added durations of days within a list like this.--TrottieTrue (talk) 19:18, 26 April 2021 (UTC)