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==Archives==
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*] - Created 29 September 2005
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*] - Created 2 November 2006
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==Name changes==
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Looking at ] and ] it seemed to me that the alteration in 1997 qualifies as a name change rather than the abolition of one constituency and the new creation of another. I have been bold and changed these articles to reflect this, however I think that it might be a good idea to work up a set if guidelines for when a name change is regraded as such and when it should be regarded as creating a new constituency. ] 22:06, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
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:This will have to be looked at seriously in time for the next election; there are a lot of changes now the boundary reviews are in thier final stages. Some are just renames - Blaby becomes South Leicestershire for one example from the top of my head - but others are deceptive in that they are completely new seats. Kenilworth and Southam is a new seat, Sefton Central takes bits from Crosby and Knowsley North/Sefton East; and so on and so on. It will take some concentration to get it right! ] | ] 22:51, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
|archive = Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies/Archive %(counter)d

== Future constituencies (again) ==

Could we agree on a standard style for future constituencies? I propose what I've just done to the ] article, although of course I'd welcome suggestions for improvements. Key points are:

* Intoductory paragraph: basically the standard used in existing constituencies, but written in the future tense (can be modified to the present tense when the constituency actually exists), with a comment that it has been created following the Boundary Commission's review.
* Boundaries: as for existing constituencies, but mentioning (with links) which current constituencies it replaces.
* No History section (that would be silly!), or Members of Parliament section (as there haven't been any yet).
* Election results: comment that the first election will be held in 2009/10. No blank results template: doesn't seem much point just yet.

(If there's already a better standard out there, could somebody give me an example and I'll change Garston and Halewood to match!)

Also, does anyone have a list of the brand new constituencies? Or perhaps someone in the know could mark along the list of all constituencies which are new, which are name changes, which have been left alone, etc. Then we'd know which articles have to actually be made, as opposed to some redirects, and could see what needs doing more easily!--] 18:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

:I created ], but it's been moved and I can never remember the new name! It's a list of the new constituencies as and when they are declared by the Boundary Commissions - the next update is set for January 11. The list is all of the seats, with electorate figures as per the Commissions report. I think your suggestions are great, I have already formed a few articles for new constituencies and/or altered/updated those constituencies where only slight tweaks have been recommended.

] | ] 19:48, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

===New articles===

Using RFBailey's template above, I am setting about creating new articles for as many new seats as I can find the time for, starting in a short while with Basildon and Billericay and then moving on as much as I can in one go. ] has been updated upto the 11 Jan report from the English Boundary Commission. ] | ] 12:55, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

==1950 election results==
Which users have access to one of the books (presumably from the FWS Craig series) that list the 1950 election results?

Specifically, could one of you fill in the ] result for that year and then that constituency will have complete results. --] 16:31, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

== Proposed merger ==

Please see ]. --] 22:14, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

==Template when more than one member elected==
The current template (as far as I can tell) doesn't lend itself very well to being used for elections before 1868 when many boroughs and counties elected more than one member. Is it possible to add a color flag to indicate a winner? ] 23:18, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
:Good god , did I really write '''color''' - bloody Microsoft. ]

Indeed some constituencies (e.g. ]) continued to elect two members until 1950. Conceivably, we could simply double up on the hold/gain boxes at the end of the box, as I demonstrate below. God only knows what we would do about enterring a majority figure however, because other than exceptional circumstances, it won't be the same for both victors - I assume we'd have to leave it out. ] 01:32, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

{{Template:Election box begin
|title=]: Lewes}}
{{Template:Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Liberal Party (UK)
|candidate = ]
|votes = 325
|percentage =
|change =
}} }}
{{archives|search=yes}}
{{Template:Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Liberal Party (UK)
|candidate = ]
|votes = 324
|percentage =
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Conservative Party (UK)
|candidate = ]
|votes = 292
|percentage =
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box candidate|
|party = ?
|candidate = Sir ]
|votes = 232
|percentage =
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box majority|
|votes =
|percentage =
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box turnout|
|votes = Electorate = ???
|percentage =
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box hold with party link|
|winner = Liberal Party (UK)
|swing =
}}
{{Template:Election box hold with party link|
|winner = Liberal Party (UK)
|swing =
}}
{{Template:Election box end}}

:We also have the problem of the STV elections in University seats (and the Combined Scottish Universities had 3 MPs!)...

:With regards majorities I think the current convention for council results is to list multiple majorities for each victor over the highest polling unsuccessful candidate. This can get confusing when a split ticket result is elected, or when parties run fewer candidates than available seats. ] 02:12, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

::Craig listed the majority of the last successful candidate over the first unsuccessful candidate, which is quite a neat idea, although it might need a note to explain it. Constituencies weren't limited to two or even three MPs - I believe the City of London had four. For the STV elections, we could just use the Irish election box (see below). ] '']'' 11:09, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

{{Template:Irish Election box begin|
|title=]: Dublin Central
}}
{{Irish Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Fianna Fáil
|candidate = ''']'''
|votes = 10,896
|percentage = 31.97
|seat = 1
|count = 1
}}
{{Irish Election box candidate|
|party = Independent
|candidate = ''']'''
|votes = 5,675
|percentage = 16.65
|seat = 2
|count = 4
}}
{{Irish Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Labour Party (Ireland)
|candidate = ''']'''
|votes = 4,149
|percentage = 12.17
|seat = 3
|count = 7
}}
{{Irish Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Fianna Fáil
|candidate = ''']'''
|votes = 2,592
|percentage = 7.61
|seat = 4
|count = 7
}}
{{Irish Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Sinn Féin
|candidate = ]
|votes = 4,979
|percentage = 14.61
|seat =  
|count =  
}}
{{Irish Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Fine Gael
|candidate = ]
|votes = 3,798
|percentage = 11.06
|seat =  
|count =  
}}
{{Irish Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Green Party (Ireland)
|candidate = ]
|votes = 1,470
|percentage = 4.31
|seat =  
|count =  
}}
{{Irish Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Christian Solidarity Party
|candidate = ]
|votes = 366
|percentage = 1.07
|seat =  
|count =  
}}
{{Irish Election box candidate|
|party = Independent
|candidate = ]
|votes = 97
|percentage = 0.28
|seat =  
|count =  
}}
{{Irish Election box candidate|
|party = Independent
|candidate = ]
|votes = 89
|percentage = 0.26
|seat =  
|count =  
}}
{{Election box end}}

::For reference, this is how I tried to put the info together for a 2-member election in Preston ] | ] 12:07, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

{{Template:Election box begin |
|title=Preston City Council Elections: Ingol ward 2003
}}
{{Template:Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Liberal Democrats (UK)
|candidate = Peter Pringle
|votes = 594
|percentage =
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Liberal Democrats (UK)
|candidate = William Shannon
|votes = 501
|percentage =
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Conservative Party (UK)
|candidate = Kathryn Calder
|votes = 432
|percentage =
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Conservative Party (UK)
|candidate = Susan Hudson
|votes = 430
|percentage =
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Labour Party (UK)
|candidate = Alan Foster
|votes = 336
|percentage =
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box candidate with party link|
|party = Labour Party (UK)
|candidate = Ian Walton
|votes = 292
|percentage =
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box majority|
|votes = 162 & 71
|percentage =
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box turnout|
|votes = 2,590
|percentage = 46
|change =
}}
{{Template:Election box end}}

I'm not really au fait with creating Wiki templates, but could we create two new templates to replace "Template:Election box candidate with party link" names something like "Template:Election box candidate Winner with party link" and "Template:Election box candidate Loser with party link" which would show the canditate row in a different colour for winners and losers, thus making the multiple winner situation more clear? ] 23:28, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

:Yes, this could be done, but as it is used on so many pages, if we were to implement it, I'd suggest retaining the current template for losing candidates and just creating a new one for winners. This could perhaps have a lighter background - I'm not a fan of huge amounts of colour in backgrounds. Alternatively, we could follow the Irish example and simply bold the names of the winners. ] '']'' 11:21, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

A few points arising from the above discussion. Remember that in producing the results from historic constituencies, we may have to include a lot of results in a list. Few full contested election results (with all candidates names and vote totals) still exist from before 1660, but that is 84 general elections ago. With by-elections we might easily have more than a hundred electoral contests to record from some constituencies. I strongly suggest we need to keep things fairly simple. (1) The approach I have taken in reporting multi-member results is simply to leave out majority and hold/gain boxes entirely. I indicate winning candidates by '''bolding''' their names. There is no really satisfactory way to define a majority in anything other than a single member election. If you look at old election results (say in ''The Times'' in the nineteenth century) they did not usually give majority figures (at least as part of a result table). If we had a hold/gain template which could cope with multiple different outcomes (2 Conservative holds or 1 Labour hold, 1 Liberal gain from Labour or whatever) then it might be useful but I suspect it would be more confusing than enlightening. (2) On STV results I agree the Irish Republic template can be used, as I have done for STV election in Northern Ireland in the 1920s. I would prefer to record the later counts as well, but that can be difficult when a lot of counts are needed to produce a result, so for the moment I support keeping things simple. (3) On turnouts, when I have had an electorate figure (from voter registation starting in 1832) I have produced a turnout figure. I have been putting the figure I was using for the registered electorate in the turnout votes box. If I had the exact number of electors who polled I indicate that number in a note after the result and I calculate an accurate turnout figure. If I do not have exact numbers of voters I follow Craig's fall-back method of dividing the number of votes by the total number of votes which an elector could cast (usually the same as the number of seats to be filled, but remember that from 1868-1885 in 3 or 4 seat constituencies the elector had a limited vote and could only cast 2 or 3 votes respectively). In a few Irish cases I did not have an electorate figure for an election, so I worked from the last reported electorate figure for that constituency (putting the year of that figure in brackets after the electorate figure in the turnout votes box). (4) In summary I think we should keep things as simple as possible, at this stage. When we have filled in the gaps in basic results, it might be worth having a project to enhance the information provided. --] 02:16, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

== Infobox for places returning members to the unreformed House ==

{| class="toccolours" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width: 300px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em; float: right;"
|+ style="margin-left: inherit; font-size: large;" |'''{{{Name}}}'''
|-
!colspan="2" bgcolor="#efefef"|]
|-
!colspan="2" bgcolor="#efefef"|Location of {{{Name}}}]]
|- style="vertical-align: top;"
|Members:|| {{{Members}}}
|- style="vertical-align: top;"
|Dates:|| {{{Year}}}
|- style="vertical-align: top;"
|]:|| ]
|- style="vertical-align: top;"
|]:|| {{{County}}}]]
|- style="vertical-align: top;"
|]:|| {{{Franchise}}}
|}

Can I raise the issue of the constituency infobox and its application to the Counties, Boroughs and Universities returning members to the unreformed House? I think that in the different circumstances of the time, it would be useful if more relevant information was given. Specifically, there were some Boroughs which were only occasionally invited to return members in the early years but later became constant, so a simple 'year of creation' is not entirely appropriate. Also, the differences in the franchise in the Borough constituencies might usefully be put in an infobox, and some unfamiliar names should be located by county. Finally, the number of members returned by the constituency varied (1, 2, and 4) so could be recorded as well. On the right is an example of what I was thinking of. Any comments? ] | ] 22:50, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
:It might also be interesting to have an optional parameter, <nowiki>{{{patron}}}</nowiki>, to indicate the "owner" of various pocket boroughs. Of course, that would vary over time; probably not practical to implement. Looks fine to me. ] ] 12:09, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
::I like the idea of disclosing patronage of a seat; maybe it should be in the list of MP's though, rather than the info box - i.e. turning the list into a table, with columns for patron and member. -] 15:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
:::Patronage did vary greatly over time. In many cases there were more than one interest in the constituency and who was elected resulted from complex negotiations and struggles. There were often understandings that a patron would nominate for one seat and let the voters choose freely for the other or for two patrons to split the representation. Tensions sometimes got resolved in a contested election. Independent voters (or those so corrupt that they wanted several rich men to hotly contest every election) complicated matters. It was only in the rottenest of rotten boroughs and a few small pocket boroughs that a tabular approach might work, but to know that say the Pitt family returned every member for Old Sarum for generations would probably not add much of value to a table. Information about patronage is really an aspect of the history of the constituency and should probably go in a text section of the article. Similarly I think information like the county, the number of members and qualifications for the electorate (all of which changed over the whole history of the constituencies represented in the unreformed House, which survived into the modern era) should go in text rather than a table. --] 02:40, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

== Alliance for Change (UK) ==

For reference, I have created an election box template for the ] party. I know they appear to use sub-titles (Britain in Sin etc.), but independent candidates and some established parties do the same without that being reflected here, or on other results sites

I've changed the party's entry in the Cheadle and Livingston by-elections. Have they stood anywhere else? ] | ] 07:37, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

:Yes, they stood in three seats in the 2005 general election - I've now linked them. ] '']'' 11:12, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

::Superb, cheers for that. I wasn't sure how to find them, so glad someone knows of them =) It's not a problem to "lose" the subtitle is it? ] | ] 12:03, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

:::I just checked "what links here" on the Alliance for Change (UK) article, then checked I'd covered as many candidacies as appeared on the list of parties standing in the 2005 general election. It's not ideal to lose the subtitle, but that's inevitable with the method we use. Like you say, several parties sometimes use suffixes with little relevance. The AFC ones are supposed to be the actual description provided by the candidate, so it's a bit more of a loss, but there's no quick and easy way around it. ] '']'' 13:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

::::Haha, I'd forgotten you could do "what links here". I make things difficult for myself ... ] | ] 13:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

===] (2005)===

Connected in some way to the above discussion. From what I understand, the BPP (as they are registered), are to stand in future elections. This will mean Election box metadata, but currently the article is shared with historic parties who used the same name. Should I set up the Election box template in any case with the active link going to the British Peoples Party article; or hive off the 2005 section to a separate article and link the Election box template onto that? ] | ] 17:20, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

:I think we've got to do what we did with the Liberal Party and SDP if they are in fact different entities, and then just turn the present article into a dab page, though I suspect the 1989 incarnation can simply be merged in with the ]. --] 17:35, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

== Future Constituencies....continued ==

Well, it's taken ages and in some cases problems still exist over the full article name (specifically, should (UK Parliament constituency) be added to certain articles)... but the current list of ] seems to be fully up to date insofar as articles have been created for all "red links".

The next stage for work from this list will be adding the new wards and/or boundary information for existing constituencies. In some cases I have already started on this (Northamptonshire, Cornwall in full already from memory...) but a lot of work is needed. This project of ours keeps on rolling.... fun, ain't it?!

] | ] 20:01, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

==FYI==
A few weeks ago I began collating the results of the ] and visited the local library. In so doing I discovered that if you are a member of your local authority library, then you are entitled to use the "Times Digital Archive" ''for free'''. This means that you can view every edition of '']'' in searchable PDF format from 1795 to 1985 (which of course contains very nearly every election result during this period). This is certainly true in East Sussex and presumably elsewhere. So all you need is a library card and a pin number (for online use) and then you can search ''The Times'' archive from the comfort on your own home. In addition you are also entitled to view '''for free''' any article on the Encyclopaedia Britannica site and the Dictionary of National Biography. I'm sure you'll all agree that these sites with free access provide an invaluable set of resources for Wikipedians. ] 22:17, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

*Results for the 1945 general election can be found on pages 9 through 14 of the edition of 27 July 1945.
*Results for the 1935 general election do not appear to have been printed complete in The Times itself but were printed in a separate supplement (although I might simplmy have missed it). Some results are in the paper on Nov 16 and Nov 18 1935.
*Result of the 1931 election are printed on pages 25-32 of the paper of Thursday Oct 29, 1931
*Results from the 1929 election are contained on pages 25 through to 28 on the paper of Saturday Jun 1, 1929.
*Results from the 1924 election are contained on pages 25 through to 28 on the paper of Friday Oct 31, 1924.
*Results from the 1923 election are contained on pages 24 through to 28 on the paper of Saturday Dec 8, 1923
*Results from the 1922 election are contained on pages 21 through to 27 on the paper of Friday Nov 17, 1922
*Results from the 1918 election are contained on pages 15 through to 22 on the paper of Monday Dec 30, 1918

Before the Representation of the People act of 1918 many MPs were returned unopposed and other seats were contested on on different days, consequently official returns are spread over several days. with some of the unopposed resultls being declared before the official polling began.

*1910 election
**Unnoposed returns on Friday, Dec 02, 1910; pg. 7
**Dec 03, 1910; pg. 11 and 12
**Monday, Dec 05, 1910; pg. 6
**Dec 07, 1910; pg. 8

**Further results on Dec 05, 1910; pg. 9
**Tuesday, Dec 06, 1910; pg. 7 & 10
**Wednesday Dec 07, 1910; pg. 7 & 10
**Thursday, Dec 08, 1910; pg. 7 & 10
**Friday, Dec 09, 1910; pg. 7 & 10
** etc...

*Instead of getting election results from ''The Times'', get them from ]'s books. Press reports are often inaccurate. ] | ] 16:42, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

:I have found The Times reports useful as background material. It sometimes helps with losing candidates names (although they do like initials) or explaining events (like what happened in Middlesex in the early nineteenth century when one candidate was unseated on petition and then the new MP was later unseated on a petition brought by the one first unseated). It is also a source which can sometimes throw up material about what fairly prominent public figures did, which can help with biographical articles. However I agree that it is not the primary source for the detailed results of elections. --] 02:54, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

== Social and Liberal Democrats ==

I've created metadata for the ], to be used for the small number of elections that they contested under that name between the merger in 1988 and renaming themselves the Liberal Democrats in 1989. --] 21:57, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

==Number of representatives per constituency==
It really ought to be made clear somewhere obvious (perhaps (] or ]) that constituencies in the past sometimes returned more than one member. It is also worth noting how that system worked i.e. it was a bit of a stitch-up. It was something I was trying to find out more about a couple of months ago but couldn't find anything on WP. A list somewhere of constituencies which were represented by two members would be nice too. ] 22:22, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

:I have done a list of ], which demonstrates how many seats each constituency had in the unreformed House of Commons (ranging from 0 for the three Scottish counties whose turn it was to be unrepresented up to 4 each for London and the merged boroughs of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis). I could do an article (say ]) with a table explaining the number of seats per constituency in different periods and how multi-member constituencies worked. I insert a short introduction in the election results section of constituency articles I have done for such seats. I suggest you look at ] for a four seat constituency, reduced to two seats in 1885. Becausae it was getting too long I split the article and produced ], which gives some historical information about how the City ran its elections in Tudor times. I hope that helps. --] 03:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

==National Front Metadata==
There appears to be metadata for both ] ( & ) and ] ( & ).

This all ought to be under the same metadata. Anybody wish to make a call on which way to jump? --] 19:16, 6 March 2006 (UTC)


:It's been a while but unless I miss my guess the same is true for ProLife Alliance and Pro-Life Alliance (or Pro *space* Life Alliance..). In this case I'd go for the articles without the British prefix, as the BNP and NF names are more commonly used and are the registered names.. ] | ] 19:19, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

== ] ==

I believe I'm right in saying that the proper title of this constituency is '''Richmond (Yorks)''' - as I ok to go ahead and move it, or is there some subtlety I'm missing? — ] ] 13:44, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
:I have often thought the article for this constituency was somehow not right, but assumed there had been an earlier agreement to name it "North Yorks" not "(Yorks)". I would move it, given the need to be accurate, but I think there may be a reason for its current place. ] | ] 14:05, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
It is customary to include the county name to distinguish the area from Richmond (Surrey). I would say Yorkshire would be better than North Yorkshire, over the whole history of the area as a Parliamentary cpnstituency. The Boundary Commission in its current report refers to the constituency as '''Richmond (Yorks)''', so that seems to be the official name now in use. --] 03:32, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

== Article Moves - advice sought ==

] appears to be on a one-man mission moving many articles for "overdisambiguation". I always assumed UK Parliament constituencies required the format "Name (UK Parliament Constituency)". Can someone confirm why this user is able to move the seats without consultation?

] | ] 15:20, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Specific examples would be useful. Looks like a development that might need watching, with the aim of keeping articles to their original purpose. ] 17:40, 21 April 2006 (UTC).

:] and ] are such examples; ] is another (] and ] had a page-move war there in January). "Overdisambiguation" is not encouraged, but what I think it's trying to prevent is article titles such as ] being used instead of ], for instance. Where there is a set of articles like the ones we have here, a consistent naming structure ought to be employed. Otherwise it just gets confusing.

:There ''was'' a discussion about the disambiguation of UK Parliament constituencies ]. I've read it and it doesn't suggest any sort of consensus was reached. --] 18:17, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

:It appears all the Birmingham seats. ] and ] spring to mind too. ] | ] 06:51, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

:I think these page moves are a bad idea. Constituencies often share names with other types of constituencies or past and present local governement districts. The consistent use of "Name (UK Parliament Constituency)" should be encouraged. ] 08:23, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

:RFBailey is correct, there was never any consensus reached, but as the articles were being created in the run-up to the general election, it was sort of agreed to create them all with the disambiguated names and then sort it out later - which never happened, so I suppose you could argue there has been a consensus for the status quo. Personally, I support the page moves, provided there are redirects from the X (UK Parliament constituency) format, and that it is certain that there is no disambiguation needed. Common units sharing names are towns, local government districts (in some cases including hundreds and wapentakes), Scottish constituencies, former Parliament of Northern Ireland constituencies and former European constituencies, but there are plenty of other possibilities. ] '']'' 23:03, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

::I think we need to get something clearer as some of the pages have only "(constituency)" as a disambiguator which is messy. One single disambiguator for the current seats is better than having a mixture.

::Almost all constituency names are taken from something or other and the only unique ones are either those in an unusual form (whilst people may talk a lot of "East Cityname" to the point that it is a notable term for an area, virtually no-one would say "Cityname East" unless referring to the political constituency) or compounds with when more than one place name is put in the title to appease local feelings (just when ''would'' anyone ever talk of ] in any other context?). I think for these seats there's a strong case for not using the tag.

::Seats in the form "East Countyname" are trickier as this form is often used by other organisations and there's a strong case that the undisambiguated page should be given over to a general note on what is considered to be this area and organisations whose name explicitly covers it.

::The other one have pretty much all been named after places which should be taken as the main users of the name, even if the place seems to derive its main fame because of the MP (e.g. perhaps ]?). So for these disambiguation is still required.

::How do these sound as a solution? ] 01:43, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

:This is not a recent thing at all, at the election when the articles were being made several editors were correcting the page names, and the South West England constituencies were sorted months ago. I recently tackled South East England and the West Midlands for two reasons (asside from the fact that they are contrary to the guidelines):
:# Many of the editors who created the articles didn't bother to even create a redirect from the non-disambiguated title, making them hard to find except where specifically linked to.
:# They make categories, linking to the articles, etc, an unnecessary mess.
:The articles I moved either had no article at the correct location, or only had a redirect. When the articles were created one of the arguments for the universal disambiguator was that for so many of them the name is also used for a district, station, or foreign place. Looking at the South West England, South East England and West Midlands categories shows what nonsense that is: perhaps as many as half of them require disambiguation. I just clicked the random article button 20 times and got 10 articles that did not require disambiguation, 3 disambiguation pages, 2 pages with hatnotes and five with suffixes, so half of the articles requiring disambiguation doesn't seem like anything special.
:Consistent naming, IMO, is not a valid argument. We could append "(district)", "(borough)", and "(county)" to articles--they are a "set". There is a ] and a person called ], so if pre-emptive disambiguation is usefull here, why ''isn't'' it useful for people? ] ] 02:23, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
:Oh, and I object to this "one man mission" charactorisation. Around 5-10% of articles in the two categories that I cleaned were already fixed before I got there. ] ] 02:24, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

There was another later ], which I started in a bad mood, and which appeared to be heading for a consensus before similarly fizzling out. For what it's worth, I now agree with Steinsky that it's much better to have the article titles with no unnecessary disambiguation suffix wherever possible, with all likely redirects created also. I've dumped a big list of articles and redirects ], if it's to anyone's interest. — ] ] 13:46, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

== Website out? ==
http://www.angeltowns.com/town/peerage/commons.htm seems to have stopped working. And so I wonder wether it should still be in links. (] 19:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC))

Its been going on and off for a day or two, and from the looks of the I am wondering if the server is acting up. If this case, then hopefully it should come back within a few days. --] 20:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

:As of 10 May 2006, it's now back up again. ] '']'' 00:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

==Election Box Metadata==
The ] used to work simply by posting <nowiki>{{Election box metadata}}</nowiki> on the relevant party's article talk page. I have tried with ] and it doesn't seem to be working at all. Is this a problem with my account or a technical issue?

Cheers ] | ] 18:06, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

:It looks like it's now working. ] '']'' 00:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

::Yes, somebody had blanked the template and it hadn't got picked up by anybody. --] 17:47, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

==Constituencies in Ireland==
There's a current discussion on naming at ] which may be of interest, in part because of similar issues to those we have encountered, and in part due to the overlap of constituencies before and after partition. ] '']'' 17:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

== Constituencies in the next UK general election ==

] has added, and after mild unease I am supporting, a new column to the table of ]. The new column aims to put a very brief description of the changes to each seat.

Despite doing a lot of work on the Boundary Reviews, I do not claim to know every last detail, so if anyone can help with this it may help expand the article in the right direction.

Thanks in advance, ] | ] 09:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

== Plaid Cymru ==

According to the Plaid and National Assembly articles, Plaid has changed its party colour to yellow, which I have ] in changing. It appears the LibDem Election Box Metadata template cannot be altered because of a redirect, but the LibDem colour is very close to the yellow of Plaid, so something will have to be altered.

What can be done to alter the LibDem colour ? ] | ] 15:53, 19 May 2006 (UTC)


:I have changed the colour to another shade of gold. ] | ] 18:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

== ] election results ==

OK, I've done what I can there but I still have missing results for 1945 and 1950. Can someone with access to that information please enter it? Thanks in advance. ] 19:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

== South/North ==

I'm in the process of changing constituencies from North Devon, to Devon North (for example), this will make it easier for people to find the constituency they are looking for. ] 05:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
:DO NOT CONTINUE DOING THIS! You cannot do ] ] 05:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I have renamed the table so it is easier to navigate. I still have to change the South and the West constituencies, but most of the other ones have been removed. The next logical step would be to rename the articles of each constituency, or they can be left as they are.


I have reverted every one of the renamings. The convention that this Project has stuck to is the official constituency names. Without any consultation these moves could cause all sorts of problems. ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 07:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
:I would have phrased this reply as "I am in the process of reverting all your edits to the correct name of the constituency, this will make it easier for people to find the constituency they are looking for." ;) ] ] 22:04, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

==Linking==
Please keep in mind that the ] article is not to an article about the House of Commons to which members are being elected from these costituencies. It is an article about Houses of Commons ''in general'', i.e., about Houses of Commons in the UK, Ireland, Canada, and, oddly, North Carolina in the USA.

You can link to the correct article by using ], or by piping to that article thusly: <nowiki>]</nowiki>. I thank you, and readers will thank you for providing a correct link. ] | ] 15:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

==Historic constituencies: Supercat/subcat duplication==
There is a general debate in Misplaced Pages, with no consensus, about when it is appropriate to list an article in both a category and one of its subcategories. In my opinion ] does not need to include all the articles in ], ], etc. Having recently added ], I am reclassifying the relevant articles, and intend removing them from the supercat. If there is some good reason not to, let me know quickly. I couldn't find here any policy either way, and a comment at ] agrees with me. ]<sup>(])</sup> 18:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

== vector maps ==

Now that TheyWorkForYou has released its API, I'm working on creating vector maps for every constituency (see ). Unfortunately, as the ".png" is hard-coded into the template, I won't be able to put them on the articles until they're ''all'' done. This should fix a few errors I've noticed, as well, such as the boundary of ] (compare ] with No. 14 on ). &mdash; ] 16:19, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
:Just looked at an outline map, and it seems that Misplaced Pages rather than the Boundary Commission is right on this one. &mdash; 16:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

:Sigh - no, the Boundary Commission is right for the seats it has recommended. Wiki currently has the seats as they are currently drawn. These maps and the Boundary Commission hold maps as they will be at the next election. ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 19:32, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
::I think it is more that the Boundary Commission has the legal boundaries, spanning uninhabited areas such as the middle of the Ribble and the Irish Sea, whereas Wiki has the effective boundaries, covering just the land. &mdash; ] 13:05, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

And how do postcodes come into this? Is it possible to describe constituencies in terms of a list of postcodes, as I have been led to believe by the workings of various websites, or do postcode areas sometimes straddle constituency boundaries? ] 15:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC).

::It could be possible, put it would be very time consuming to do it. You might want to give a go, you may find it relevant to your query ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 15:42, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

:::I have looked at this and I can see no correlation between constitiuencies in London or Kent (the areas that I looked at) and the first half of postcodes. ] 18:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

== {{tl|UK-constituency-stub}} split ==

This stub type is rather oversized, at five listings pages. One possibility would be to split off the "historic" constituencies. Suggestions welcome at ]. ] 20:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

== Getting into focus... ==

I don't want to sound out of turn, but I think this project is looking a bit out of focus recently. My main problem is with page moves occuring without any consultation - why are pages like "Birmingham, Hall Green" appearing as redirects without a mention here? Then we have "Salford and Eccles" accepted as a separate article, but "Wentworth and Dearne" is redirected.

This, coupled with an insane number of stubs, lack of constitency in results tables, all sums up a project losing its way.

A certain group of people have worked very hard on these articles, and I am very proud of the work I have done throughout the past few months, but I get the sense that something needs to be done to "tighten up" the way things are done. In three or four years time, or possibly as early as next year, we could have an election to deal with, and I'm not sure we're ready.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant, I just feel concerned that the project is somewhat wayward. ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 06:15, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

:Perhaps an answer is to create a standard stub for every constituency and then leave people to fill in the details over time. I jumped in and set something like that up for Irish Parliamentary constituencies, when I first began to do constituency articles and before I was aware of this project. I based myself on what seemed to me to be best practice in this area on Misplaced Pages, so what I did should hopefully be close to the ideas of members of this project. I did get into some trouble with Irish Wikipedians about the naming of the articles, but I think the basic design of what I did could be used for British constituencies. I will give a direction to one of the Irish stub articles, which no one has done anything much with yet, so people can comment on whether I should do something similar for English constituencies which do not yet have an article. Perhaps it would be helpful to newcomers to include in these stubs say the format for a table of MPs, with the last member for the historic constituency filled in as well as the last election result - so I will add those details to the chosen article. See ]. --] 00:11, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

== Problems with listing borough divisions and county compass-point name order ==
I have been going through this list and I notice that no consistent policy has been applied in two areas. I suggest we need a consensus, more perhaps for the purpose of this list than naming the constituency articles, rather than my taking a view and altering things on my own.

The first is whether the name of a borough, which is split into named rather than compass-point constituencies, should be prefixed to the specific name of the division. The most absurd anomaly I have come across is that the East Toxteth division of Liverpool is listed as 'East Toxteth' and the West Toxteth division is listed under 'Liverpool West Toxteth'. My inclination is to accept the specific name and only add the borough name in brackets if there is potential for confusion, e.g. Exchange (Liverpool) and Exchange (Manchester), or the specific name seems a bit too generic for a non-expert to easily relate it to a particular city such as Park (Sheffield). This suggestion has the advantage of being consistent with the way we have set out the names of county divisions and deals with the odd case where a constituency moved from being a county division at one redistribution to a borough one at another (Partick for example, a division of Lanarkshire in 1885 and of Glasgow in 1918).

The second problem is order of the compass-point and name for county divisions. Normally the official constituency name puts the compass-point first for county seats (and second for borough ones), such as East Dorset rather than Dorset East, but we have in the list examples of using both orders for different counties. I suggest that in compiling a list, it is easier for the user of the article to have the place name first. This wouls also promote consistency between county and borough seats, which is important since the Boundary Commission have recently done things like making one Reading seat a county and the other a borough constituency (with the compass point put in different places in the official constituency names). --] 00:52, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

:There may be some errors, but this list should be based on the guidelines developed at ]. If you'd like to put something else forward, that'd be the best place to propose it. ] '']'' 03:11, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

*Thanks for the guidance. I will look at the guidelines and see if I think they need changing. --] 13:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Does seem to me that in alphabetical lists it is best to have the place name first (using piping or redirects to link to other forms of names). ] 13:39, 22 September 2006 (UTC).

*This links well with doktorbuk's comments above. For me, the exact form used is less important than consistency. However, the suggestion of disambiguating along the lines of "Park (Sheffield)" seems undesirable, as it is almost always known as "Sheffield Park" (with or without a comma).

**I was not involved in drawing up current guidelines and I may have cut across them as I was not aware they existed. I have not (so far at least) found the precise decisions on constituency names but I gather the policy is to follow the official name. It seems to me that that policy has not been followed very consistently at least for historic constituencies.

:I would emphasise that I am talking about how constituencies should be referred to in lists, not how the constituency articles themselves are named. If the decision is that we follow the exact official name in all cases, I suspect quite a lot of names will need changing once the relevant Acts of Parliament and statutory instruments are looked at.

:For understandable reasons decisions were taken, which reduced the number of individual articles. One example is that borough and county constituencies with the same specific name are treated as the same constituency. If you are strictly following official names I would strongly suggest that the parliamentary borough of Littlepuddle is a quite different constituency from the Littlepuddle division of Blankshire. This argument has less force in recent redistributions where almost all constituencies have similar numbers of electors but I would say it is very strong for such changes in 1885. Craig for example, until quite recent times, used the borough or county prefix before specific names. 'Blankshire, Littlepuddle' is a more accurate name for a county division than just 'Littlepuddle'. On the other hand with changes in county and borough boundaries and increasing numbers of cases where the Boundary Commissions drew constituencies that crossed county/borough boundaries I agree that whole way of referring to constituencies is best abandoned. The county or borough name can be added in brackets after the specific name in cases which might otherwise cause confusion.

:Another sensible decision seems to have been to always use compass-point designations in the form 'East' rather than 'Eastern'. However the official name of British (but not Irish) county divisions before 1950 tended to be things like Eastern Blankshire rather than East Blankshire.

:I would suggest, at least for lists, the rules be that:-
* (1) The first word of the constituency title be the first place name mentioned in the official name (excluding any county or borough of which a constituency with a specific name was part). All that would be needed in a simple case would be the name, say 'Littlepuddle'.
* (2) If there are or were two constituencies in different parts of the country with the same or misleadingly similar names the county or borough most associated with the constituency can be added in brackets. An example was Richmond (Surrey) and Richmond (Yorkshire). The second is a current constituency and its official name is Richmond (Yorks), so this sort of approach is accepted by the authorities. It is also commonly used in historic cases like Newport (Cornwall) and Newport (Isle of Wight).
* (3) If the official name of a constituency is 'East Blankshire' it should be listed as 'Blankshire East'. If someone is using a list the easiest way to locate a place of interest is for that placename to be used to index the entries. If Blankshire has East and West divisions looking through the whole list for East Blankshire and West Blankshire is more difficult than if Blankshire East and Blankshire West are next to each other in the list.
* (4) If there is more than one place name the official word order can be used for the subsequent names. Fermanagh and South Tyrone is the official name and there is no advantage to the user of a list in using Tyrone South in the list.
* (5) Special cases. Some counties and boroughs have the same name. County Durham and the City of Durham are the obvious English example, but there are numerous such cases in Ireland and all Irish counties are often referred to as County Dublin and so on. Again for list purposes I would prefer the place name first and the clarification to be in brackets. Therefore Durham (County) and Durham (City of) should be used.
* (6) In a few cases, for all or part of its existence, a constituency has a prefix before the official name, which is not required by point 5 above. The obvious case is the City of London, but City of Chester and City of York have also been used. I suggest those cases be listed in the form 'London (City of)' (also variants like 'London and Westminster (Cities of)'). A pointless prefix like 'Royal' Tunbridge Wells, which appeared in one redistribution, I am inclined to ignore.

:Any comments or suggested alternative rules? --] 02:52, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

::Will give comments later, but the previous decisions are at ] and continued at ]. ] '']'' 03:53, 24 September 2006 (UTC)



:STOP STOP STOP!!! I wish people would think about these things before coming up with solutions like "All counties should be this or that". There is a reason why the constituencies are listed as they are - these are the official names. Look at the Boundary Commission pages, look at the Parliament pages, look at official results pages - electon-demon.co.uk for one. I know there are contradictions and unusual names - but that is the system this country uses. This is the system Wiki should use. I am already quite sick of pointless - in my opinion - of redirects to names people assume are right when they are wrong. Let us not spend anymore time coming up with solutions to problems which do not exist. ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 08:45, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

==Moving On With Official Names for Constituencies==
I get the message that dominant (although not unanimous) opinion in this project is that we should use the official names of constituencies and accept some inconsistencies and inconveniences that result.

The next question is what are the official names? I take it that current constituency names in use by the project have been taken from recent Orders in Council or Boundary Commission reports. Has far back has this been done? I feel that it should be relatively straight forward to find the Acts of Parliament and (more recently) statutory instruments, that defined constituencies created or altered, at least back to 1832 and that this would be better than relying on secondary sources, even relatively high quality ones. I have no particular wish to duplicate work which has already been done, but in the absence of assurances that the names I altered in the list of constituencies were definitely the official ones I may have to check things myself. --] 15:22, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I have started ] to give an idea of the sort of thing I mean. What I am doing is at a greater level of detail, than the other lists I have seen. Instead of one line per constituency, I am doing one line per constituency per redistribution. If this exercise is completed it will provide a definitive list of official names, which will assist in making decisions about which constituencies should be aggregated for articles and higher level lists. --] 17:01, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

:One thing I wish to note here is that using official names does not ''per se'' preclude sorting them slightly differently. If the issue is finding things in a list, it could be sorted, like so, perhaps ->

*Bedford
*North Lancashire
*Lancashire West
*Manchester Picadilly
*Reading East
*West Reading
*Southampton Itchen
*North Southampton
*Southampton West

I'm not advocating this idea, I just thought I'd mention it. ] - ] 23:48, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

*Thanks. I think that is a very good idea, because it deals with my concern about ease of use of lists, without causing problems on altering official names. --] 03:06, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

:*All we need to make sure is the article names are correct. If the links are made easier, that is fine, but the article names must be the correct names. ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 09:16, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

==Turnout Box==
I have a practical suggestion to improve the turnout box in the election results template. At the moment I suspect the votes in this box are supposed to be total votes cast but I prefer to put the registered electorate figure. There is room in the box to add a space for registered electorate (probably to line up with the candidates name spaces). I am not sure I could alter the template and presumably I should not do it without consultation, if I could.

--] 03:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

:I agree. It's a bit odd not to have a space for the registered electorate given that we have this statistic for practically all elections since 1832. ]. &#147;] ] ]&#148;. 19:18, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

== Article names, guidelines needed? ==

I have been doing a lot of work creating stubs for MPs and constituencies, and adding succession boxes, as well as checking links.

I have never been happy with this business of stripping off the ''(UK Parliament constituency)'' suffix from the article names: given the fact that all constituencies are named after geograhical places, it is a recipe for ongoing disambiguation problems. Constituency articles are linked to so many times that disambiguating them retrospectively is a big task (the average constituency will be linked to from about ten lists of MPs elected, about 5 MPs, plus numerous other candidates, by-elections etc).

So, if people do insist on this renaming, please may I ask for a few restrictions when it's done:

# Don't do a redirect bypass on links of the form <nowiki>]</nowiki>, even if the article has been moved to plain old ''Borsetshire South West''. It'll save a lot of work later, when articles are created for Borsetshire South-West Primary Care Trust, Borsetshire South-West Neighbourhood Forum, and a general article on the area.
#Don't strip the suffix for Irish constituencies: there so many difft types of Parl constitituency there that it's hard enough keeping track of them even when they are adequately disambigauted. (Ireland has constituencies for: Irish Parliament pre 1800, UK Parliament 1801-1922, Dail Eireann since 1922)
#Be wary of stripping the suffix for Scottish constituencies: the Scottish Parliament constituencies use the same boundaries as the 1997-2005 Westminster constituencies, so there are a growing number of article pairs such as ] and ]. (If you're thinking on suggesting that one or other of them should use the undisambiguated title, well ... don't go there).

--] <sup>] • (])</sup> 17:00, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


We've been going round this circle for ages, and I doubt we'll get anywhere soon. I have never been happy with stripping UK Parliament constituency from any page, but not only is this happening without consultation, I know find examples like "Liverpool, Riverside" cropping up without any consultation either. I have said a lot above - we are losing focus on this project and I don't know where we can go to sort it out. ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 21:11, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

What is most important to me is the use of disambiguators in links to articles about constituencies, even if that means linking via a redirect. Difficult to ensure, however, if the articles themselves lack disambiguators in their titles. ] 11:25, 28 September 2006 (UTC).

I refer to my answer the last two times this came up, and to the official guidelines on disambiguation. ] ] 21:30, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

:Those guidelines are just that: guidelines, not articles of faith. My concern here is simply to ensure that the links work, and are maintainable. I have no intention of trying to count them, but at a guess we will have articles for about 2000 constituencies (when all are complete), each with an average of (say) ten or fiften incoming links. That's 20,000&ndash;30,0000 links to maintain, and ''almost every one of them'' is inherently ambiguous (or at high risk of being of becoming ambiguous), because the name is either that of a geographical entity or is closely derived from a geographical entity.

:Having been working intensively on MPs and constituencies for the last few weeks, I have no doubt conclude that they are ''not'' being maintained with sufficient thoroughness to allow confidence that these links unqualified links survive, and I have personally sorted out dozens of them.

:I sometimes think that some contributors bring to this discussion a slight misconception in the shape of an implicit assumption that a constituency is a ''geographical'' entity. That's not how I see it: a constituency is primarily a ''legal/political'' entity, which these days always has a geographical element, but did not always (see, for example, the university constituencies). Caling a constituency "South Borsetshire" is a form of shorthand: the entity being referred to is really "The Parliamentary constituency of South Borsetshire". To my mind, stripping out any reference to "parliamentary constituency" in the article name is a form of inappropriate abbreviation, and I would suggest that that if people regard the parenthetical suffix of "(UK Parliament constituency)" as a disambiguator, then a better solution would be to unparethisise it, as (for example) "South Borsetshire Parliamentary constituency".

:One of the reasons this occurs, of course, is the tendency within any sphere to abbreviate geographically derived names. For example, a friend worked for a pair of ]s which we will call "Borchester South PCT" and "Borchester City PCT" (real example, city name changed). Within the Borchester NHS, these names are abbreviated to "Borchester South" and "Borchester City", and within the PCTs to "South" and "City". A similar thing happens with constituencies, but because there is a much wider involvement with constituencies, the abbreviation is more widely understood. That doesn't make it unambiguous: there is also a parliamentary constituency called "Borchester South", covering a different (though intersecting) area, and the full names need to be used when a discussion involves both entities.

:An encyclopedia inevitably involves references to more than one usage of a geographical name. Why make a rod for our own backs by abbreviating the constituency names to a point where that ambiguity is inevitable?

:To my mind the best way of doing is this is for ''every'' constituency article to include the "parliamentary constituency" qualifier (however it's constructed), and for the unqualified name to be a disambiguator (unless it's genuinely unambiguous, which it may be in rare cases such as ]). So, for example ] should really be a dab page which offers a choice of:
:*The ] district of the city of Sheffield, in South Yorkshire
:*], a constituency in the Heely district

--] <sup>] • (])</sup> 12:09, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

:Good post BrownHairedGirl. I agree with you. I have had minor edit wars over this, and if I could I would ensure all Constituency pages had "UK Parliament constituency" in their article name. This is an encyclopedia, and all print examples that I can think of have a house style throughout. We currently have a mix of no suffixes, the word "constituency" and the full "UK Parliament constituency", and recently a crop of "comma" articles (Liverpool, Riverside, and the Birminghams, for examples).

:We can either have a standard system, or this mix-and-match. I know which I prefer. ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 12:21, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

# As I have stated in previous posts, there are nowhere near as many clashes as people are claiming, or if there is it is because people are constructing clashes where none really exist. If there is an area (is it really a ''district''?) called ''Heeley'' and nobody calls it ''Sheffield Heeley'', and there is a constituency called ''Sheffield Heeley'' that nobody abbreviates to ''Heeley'' there is no ambiguation to disambiguate, and even if some people do mix the names, than it should be solved with hatlinks.
# As far as I am aware "Primary Care Trust" is part of the official name of the organisation. And, as far as I am aware, "Parliamentary constituency" is not part of the official name of the constituency. Therefore there will be no chance of the pages clashing. The most that could be needed is a hatlink on the constituency page pointing to the PCT page. The same goes for Neighbourhood Forums and the like. Should I move "Bristol" to "Bristol (city)" and have a disambiguation page for "Bristol University", "Bristol Harbour", "Bristol City Council" and every other organisation with "Bristol" in its name? No, because the city is called "Bristol", and the other things are not called "Bristol". Conflicts with things like districts and stations was the argument that came up when this project first started, but it wasn't a big issue then and it's not become any more of one.
# Again, why do constituencies require a standard system, while people, settlements, films, etc, etc, don't? They also suffer from disambiguation issues to an extent only a little less than constituencies, and use a similar mix and match depending on the circumstances (I think I even included statistics on the matter last time this same conversation turned up). The only other place in Misplaced Pages that uses such a system is American settlements, which use "City, State", and even then it's not analogous to this situation, because Americans actually use that format in conversation.

The guidelines are indeed only guidelines, but I've yet to see a convincing case for them to be broken. ] ] 13:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

:In reply to Steinsky/Joe D:

:#I think that part of the problem here is that you seem to be looking at the narrow question of whether the precise article name would be used for something else, whereas I am considering whether it is ambiguous.
:::Then you've missed the point of what disambiguation on Misplaced Pages is for.
:#*The abbreviations do happen a lot more than you might think. The MP for Birmingham Cricketland is quite likely to refer to herself in many contexts as "MP for Cricketland", so the "Cricketland" article ought to be hatlinked. As to Sheffield Heeley, yes there is an area called "Heeley" or, I think, more usually "Heeley Green". And I don't know what you are on about making a distinction between an area and a district unless that is a pedantic reference to district councils.
:::Exactly. Hatlinks. And it's not pedantic: "district" has a precise definition in terms of UK geography so it's best not to bring confusion by misusing it.
:#*The Sheffield Heeley case is one example worth considering further, because although the residents of Heeley Green are unlikly to describe themsleves as living in "Sheffield Heeley", they are likely to recognise that term as describing that area, unless qualified. Same goes for Glasgow Pollok or Ealing Southall.
:::Exactly what ] are for. Incidently, it doesn't really matter that people would recognise "Sheffield Heeley" as a geographical area rather than a constituency because disambiguation is designed for readers, not for editors. One should not be asking "What do I expect to find when I link to, or click a link to 'Sheffield Heeley'?" because it's the editor's job to check they link to the right place. One should ask "What are the majority of readers expecting to find when they put 'Sheffield Heeley' in the search box?" I'm guessing somebody looking for the geographical area is almost always going to search for "Heeley", not "Sheffield Heeley".
:#*For constituencies using compass points, the name clash is direct: "South Suffolk" is a description of a geographical area, which would easily be used in many other ways. In some cases, such as ], it's also the name of a district council, but even where it isn't, why confuse people by making them guess?
:::Because the same argument could be made about anything on Misplaced Pages. Why not pre-emptively disambiguate biographies, they clash all the time? The fact is, we have a perfectly good disambiguation proceedure in place, and '''constituencies are not a special case''' -- they clash with other articles in the same ways and only slightly more often than the average article. Sir ] even clashes with a constituency, so I really think we must go around appending "(person)" to all biographies, after all, why confuse people?
:#As far as I am aware, the official name of a constituency is the "the constituency of xxxx".
:::Then provide evidence for it and move all of the constituencies to the official name.
:#People, films, etc do not use names directly derived from another entity on which[REDACTED] will almost certainly have an article, and do not use names which are likely to be an exact copy of a geographical area. --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 19:04, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
:::No, but they do suffer from disambiguation problems to a similar extent as constituencies, so why not pre-emptively disambiguate ''everything''? ] ] 11:04, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

::Personally I prefer the rule that all articles should be at ''XYZ (UK Parliament constituency)'' because it has the merits of consistency. It means that if writing a biography on an obscure MP or candidate, I can put the link in as "<nowiki>]</nowiki>" and be confident that, even if the article isn't there at the moment, it will be when someone writes it. ]. &#147;] ] ]&#148;. 19:12, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

===Summary of the issue===
I'm going to ask for comments from editors unconnected with the project, so I'll attempt a concise summary of the situation. I hope I represent your views fairly.
* Some users want to append "(UK Parliament constituency)" to ''all'' of the constituencies, whether they clash with other articles or not because:
*# There are a high number of clashes, e.g. with geographical areas, train stations, etc.
*# The name of the consituency can be ambiguous with informal geographical areas, even if they do not and will not have another Misplaced Pages article of the same name.
*# It's less work for editors linking to constituencies not to have to look up the page name.
* My response to these claims is that:
*# There are less clashes than claimed -- perhaps just over half -- and we don't pre-emptively disambiguate on the chance that there may be future clashes. The same arguments could be made about biographies and a number of other topics in Misplaced Pages.
*# and 3. This misses the point of ], which is mainly to help readers using the search box choose between two articles, not people clicking links or making links. The addition of the suffix does nothing to help readers using the search box differentiate between a constituency and an informal geographical area that has no Misplaced Pages article, because they simply get redirected to the constituency page.
* Additionally, background on the origin of the situation may be useful, including ]. The situation arose mainly because the constituencies were bulk created before the last general election, and because of time constraints the suffix was used by default, such that 90% of constituencies had the suffix. IMO, this is where argument number three above arose: editors got used to not having to do the work of looking up the correct page, and began thinking of the suffix as the "correct" format. However, note that when the project was young and the suffix hadn't become entrenched, the concensus was ''against'' pre-emptive disambiguation. Indeed, you can see the evolution of the situation over time by looking at the previous names discussion further up the page where doktorb states ''"I always assumed UK Parliament constituencies required the format 'Name (UK Parliament Constituency)'"''.
* ] ] 11:28, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

In addition to the above, other admins may wish to watch {{user|BrownHairedGirl}}, who is challenging the current concensus not to use the suffix and is moving pages using the above arguments against the current concensus and without responding to the rebuttals. ] ] 12:03, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

:Joe, it's abundantly clear from the discusions above that there is no consensus on this issue, and I don't think that it's at all helpful to claim that there is :(

:I also don't think that your summary of the POVs here is fair: it's a selective rehearsal of a few points your dismissal of opposing arguments, rather than a summary of the discussion. And if you ae attempting to summarise, it's a bad idea to "rebut" points which have already been discussed withnout acknowledging he other POV: to take but one example, you say that the imformal geographical area would simply redirect to the constituency, whereas I have been suggesting that to assist in disambiguation it should be a dab page.
::Do you propose writing articles about informal geographical areas then? If so, how would they be defined? If not, what is there to disambiguate? ] ] 13:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

:Finally, your suggestion that I have not responded to your "rebuttals" is bizarre, and stetches my ability to ]. Please read the discussion above for a series of lengthy responses. --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 12:21, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
::I will asume, for the sake of AGF, that you simply haven't noticed the responses in the section above then. ] ] 13:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

::PS, I do not agree with the characterisation of the "(UK Parliament constituency)" suffix as a disambiguator. The name of the entity is not "xxx South", but "The Parliamentary constituency of xxx" (or alternatively, "The constituency of xxx"): the suffix is a way of representing the name, not a disambiguator as in "Sam Spade (Hawaiian communist politician)". --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 12:25, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

:::If you can provide evidence that the official name is "The parliamentary constituency of..." I will help you move all of the articles to the official name, and the argument is over. ] ] 12:28, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

: For my part (as someone who uses Misplaced Pages to find things out), I find the form WITH (UK parliament constituency) very useful, as it clearly differentiates between constituencies and vaguer geographical descriptions. ] 13:17, 11 October 2006 (UTC)


::For what it's worth, the 'official name' at the moment (in so far as anything can be official) is 'XYZ Borough Constituency' or 'XYZ County Constituency'. The use of the term 'constituency' is however relatively new. ]. &#147;] ] ]&#148;. 13:20, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
:::This sounds like the perfect solution to the problem. I will lend any support I can to helping the transition to the correct names. ] ] 13:38, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

:::BrownHairedGirl's moving of pages to XXX (UK Parliament constituency) does have the support of the vast majority of those of us who are working in this area. Simply moving the pages to vague georgraphic names such as South Dorset as has has been done is too non specific and we prefer to standardise on 'South Dorset (UK Parliament constituency) as a given example for clarity. Also in the likes of 'West Lancashire', the District council is already on that page as as are the vast majority where the councils and the constituencies share the same same, hence the use of 'West Lancashire (UK Parliament constituency)' for that page and also many others like it. The formula of a name on its own with no ref to (UK Parliament constituency) is just unworkable and conflicts with many other pages, hence the use of (UK Parliament constituency) as a standard marker which works well. I hope this clarifies the issues. ] 13:21, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
::::No, it doesn't, and my response is above, and in the previous conversation on the matter. This does not apply to constituencies any more than any other topic on Misplaced Pages. Perhaps just over half of constituencies clash. ] ] 13:32, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

: I have to say I agree with ] on this - it makes sense to have a consistent approach to naming articles about constituencies, and if as ] says over half of constituencies clash, then standardising on a non-clashing form would be the simplest way to do this. ] 13:39, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
::Argh. *bangs head on wall*. '''Constituencies are not a special case'''. Around half of all articles have hatnotes, suffixes or are in some way part of the disambiguation system. Your argument could be applied to any category of articles. ] ] 13:45, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
::: I never suggested that constituencies were a special case - just that it makes sense to name the articles about them in a consistent way - just as it makes sense to have consistent naming within other classes of articles. ] 13:48, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

::::A comparable situation might be London tube stations. They are usually named after a local landmark, but not every local landmark has an article. However every tube station article ends in 'station'. ]. &#147;] ] ]&#148;. 13:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

:::::Yes, because "station" is part of the official name. It is analogous to using "county constituency" or "borough constituency" as the suffix (which I fully support), not the arbitrary suffix proposed. ] ] 14:02, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

: Is there anyone apart from Steinsky opposing the 'xyz (UK Parliament constituency)' formula? ] 15:28, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

::Not that I can see! --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 15:31, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Joe D/Steinsky, I have just looked back at the discussions above and I see that after several exchanges someone (who I presume to be you) had added further unsigned comments interspersed among my points. I'm sorry, I hadn't seen those -- but I was looking at the end of the discusion for for further comments.

However, I had been particating in an ongoing discussion. The fact that I hadn't replied for several hours to misplaced comments is poor grounds for saying that I was acting "without responding". And as a matter of courteousy, terms like "rebuttal" are unhelpful.

One of the difficulties in this field is that politicians tend not to use such a rigorous taxonomy as those in your discipline of genetics. One example of "official naming" is in the , where we have "Buckingham (county constituency)", "Milton Keynes South West (borough constituency)" and "North East Milton Keynes (county constituency)". In a way that doesn't help us much, because the county and borough descriptors are superfluous to our requirements here (to my mind they belong in body of the articles, not in the titles), which is why I think that a narrow focus on the hunt for an "official" name is likely to lead us around in circles, just as it did with older constituencies where even the geographical element of the name was inconsistent. The bottom line is that there area varirty of names in use by officialdom, and insofar as there is any consistency, it includes info which I think is irrelevant to our naming purposes here,

In a way, the official naming" issue reflects our discussions here. The politicians have tended in some contexts to use variant names sufficient to distinguish constituencies merely from each other; our discussions here seem to focus on to what degree we distinguish constituencies from ''other entities'', which is a different question. I am a political anorak who has worked closely in or with Westminster for twenty years, so I am acutely aware of how poloiticians use different naming conventions in different contexts: this is fuzzy area, not a rigidly delineated one.

I think that part of this is exemplified by your focus on the word district. A "district" is an ill-defined ''geographical'' area, but a "District Council" is a ''political/governmental/adminstrative'' entity covering a geographical area. With respect, it is a misleading oversimplification to say that a District Council is a geographical term, because it is both more and less than that.

However, rather than obsess ourselves about what is an "official" term (when the laws and administrators use several different, though overlapping taxonomies: FWD Craig and Richard Kimber both have a lot to say about the fuzziness), I suggest that we should all step back and ask what we are trying to achieve here.

It seems to me that there are several different conceptual strands at work (again, I hope I am misrepresenting nobody), and I would like to try to explore those:

#Joe/Steinsky regards constituencies as a purely geographical term; I (and I think some others) see constituencies primarily as legal/political entities, albeit with some geographical basis, but not primarily as geographical terms.
#Joe/Steinsky seems to reagrd the overriding criterion for an Misplaced Pages article name as being uniqueness; others of us want to add a few other factors, particularly a clarer indication in the title of the article's subject
#Joe/Steinsky is satisfied with names which are unique; others of us want a consistent naming scheme in this field, so that articles of a particular type are readily identifiable.

I don't think that any of us here is being silly or obstructive, but rather that we are bringing some honest but conflicting principles to bear on the subject. However, I do think that this project will always struggle if constituencies are taken as purely geographical terms.

For myself, I want:

*every constituency to have an article name which covers the core point that ii is an article about an electoral constituency for a particular body, be that the Scottish Parliament, the UK Parliament, the GLA, or whatever.

*every constituency for the same parliament to be named within a consistent taxonomy, so that the[REDACTED] article name can be inferrred

That's all.

To be honest, I would not have started with "xx (UK Parliament constituency)": given the experience of working through is issue for the many Parliaments within the UK (I count more than twelve in the last four hundred years! the Republic of Ireland has had five types of constit in the last 210 years), I would like a naming format ''without'' paentheses, such as "xxx, Scottish Parliament constituency", "yyy, UK Parliament constituency", "zzz, European Parliament constituency".

But we have to start from where we are now. The "xx (UK Parliament constituency)" is widely used, has a few technical advantages, and is clear and well-known. The disadvatge of it is that because some people regard it as a disambiguator, it seems to fall prey to those seeking to eliminate what they perceive on technical grounds as unnecessary over-disambiguation.

I think that it is most unfortunate to look at a category list for, "Category:Borsetshire", and see articles called "North Borsetshire", "East Borsetshire" and "South Borsetshire", and find that one is about a parliamentary constituency, one is about a District Council, and one is about the beautiful countryside of that part of the county.

Hope this helps! --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 15:33, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

:It seems there is, in this short convo, and in previous conversations, a consensus that XX (UK Pc) is preferred to other names. When I came to Wiki, I assumed that form was standard because all the constituency pages seemed to follow that pattern. This is why I had the "edit wars" over moves because I saw the XX (UK Pc) form as the way Wiki did things.

:If these pages were created like this at the start, and hundreds of pages use this system, can I respectfully request that this issue could be solved if we decide before the next election to use one system - and I suggest follow the consensus here and use "XX (UK Pc)" for ALL constituencies. ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 15:42, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

:With regards the issue of local names I have to agree. To my recollection the only political use of, say, "East Surrey" is for the consistuency (made up of Tandridge district and Horley town in Reigate & Banstead district). However a lot a organisations use "East Surrey" as a name for the operations - e.g. a transport agency who use it for the four eastern Surrey districts and Elmbridge (i.e. 5 & 1/2 seats). The page ] would work best as a page on what the term generally means and specific examples of usage - especially as the can sometimes be confusion (Elmbridge could be in the west for instance). ] 15:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
:::That's very much what I was hoping for with those sort of article names, and I think it would be a very useful geographical exercise (though a big one!) In my own town (call it Borchester), what people think of as West Borchester is markedly different to the area covered by the Borchester West constituency, and other entities (such as the local Primary Care Trust) have their own creative interpretation of the area. The same goes for most constituencies: ], for example is a district council covering what looks to me like a small part of what might geographically be termed "West Devon". The current "West Devon" article should really be moved to "West Devon District Council", and the ] page used as you describe. --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 16:32, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
::] has history on her side when she refers to constituencies as political entities and not geographical terms. In the unreformed House especially it was quite clear that the Member's duty was to represent their constituency as a whole: not just the people who lived there, but the industries and the local associations and culture and traditions of an area. ]. &#147;] ] ]&#148;. 16:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

===Straw poll===
Not as a vote, but just as an indication of where opinions are at, may I suggesr that it might be useful to ask people where they stand on this question as of now? Just add your sig below the appropriate option. --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 15:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

;Include "(UK Parliament constituency)" on all constituency articles
*'''Support''' ] <sup>] • (])</sup> 15:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
*'''Support''' ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 15:43, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
*'''Support''' ] 15:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
*'''Support''' ] 15:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
*'''Support''' ]. &#147;] ] ]&#148;. 16:05, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
*'''Support''' ] '']'' 02:13, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
*'''Support''' ] 08:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
*'''Support''' ] 00:43, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
*'''Support''' ] 09:38, 14 October 2006 (UTC).
*'''Support''' ] 07:42, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
*'''Support''' ] 11:37, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

;Use shortest unique name

;Other option
Use disambiguation only when neccessary.
*'''Support''' -- ] 16:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

;Undecided/don't care

===Following the Straw Poll===

It now seems from the straw poll - unscientific as it is - that the consensus seems to be in favour of ensuring all UK constituency pages have the same suffix regardless of any disambiguation.

I propose the moves are made as soon as possible. Whilst this is happening, maybe an admin can "untangle" ] from its unnessesary redirect too.

] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 08:07, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

:Since the straw poll produced such a remarkably clear outcome, I have been busy moving pages and fixing the redirects: so far I think have completed:
:*{{cl|Parliamentary constituencies in the East Midlands}}
:*{{cl|Parliamentary constituencies in the East of England}}
:*{{cl|Parliamentary constituencies in the North East}}
:*{{cl|Parliamentary constituencies in the North West}}
:*{{cl|Parliamentary constituencies in the South West}}
:*{{cl|Parliamentary constituencies in Wales}}
:*{{cl|Parliamentary constituencies in Yorkshire and the Humber}}

:Still to be done:
:*{{cl|Parliamentary constituencies in London}}
:*{{cl|Parliamentary constituencies in the South East}}
:*<s>{{cl|Parliamentary constituencies in the West Midlands}}</s> ''done 2006-10-27''

:I will keep on working on them in between other tasks, but it would be great if others could do a few too. Unfortunately, some of these moves require admin powers, because of the redirects in the way … but not all of them do. (As long as the redirect was created automatically by a previous move, anyone can move the page back: admin powers are required only if the redirect was created manually or has been edited manually).

:As to ], I tok a quick look but I'm not sure what should be done. What did you have in mind? -] <sup>] • (])</sup> 15:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

::Cheers BHG - good work on all this. If we have "allowed" ] to be separate from ] and ], then it does not add up to me for the similiarly developed/composed Wentworth and Dearne seat to be re-directed to Wentworth. I assume (not being clear on redirect protocol) that a request has to be placed for the redirect to be "undone" to allow the retention of a separate Wentworth and Dearne article? ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 15:54, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

:::Hi doktorb, I get what you mean now, and sorry for being a bit slow on the uptake.

:::There is no magic involved, and no admin powers required: ] is currently a redirect, which means that it is simply an article containing only the following content: ''<nowiki>#REDIRECT ]</nowiki>''.

:::If you want to make a substantive article in its place (and I think that's a very good idea), then all you need to is to and replace the redirect with a substantive article. Hope this helps! --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 10:44, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

==Historic constituency names==
:I do not believe the official name guideline is sufficient. I have been working on what the official names actually were by looking at the statutes and statutory instruments creating and redistributing constituencies. I have found that, especially pre-1885, there are inconsistencies. The form of a constituency name can change in laws passed in the same session (two examples are Mary-le-bone and Brighton in the Representation of the People Act 1832 and Marylebone and Brighthelmstone in the Parliamentary Boundaries Act 1832).

:The situation with Irish constituencies is, in some respects, worse. The names to be used are fairly clear but there does not seem to be a consistent official way to disambiguate boroughs and counties with the same name. I found examples, in different parts of the Representation of the People (Ireland) Act 1832, where the same constituencies are referred to with either a prefix or a suffix.

:There are also instances of forms like the County of York, instead of Yorkshire. It is only from the mid twentieth century that there is an absolurely unambiguous constituency name in the legislation (and even then you have problems about using commas and hyphens, where different decisions were sometimes made for different constituencies in the same redistribution or the same seat in different redistributions).

:I suspect that the attitude, of the people who drafted legislation in the nineteenth century, was that places were enfranchised and it did not really matter what name or terminology was used to describe them. Any form of words that referred to the place could be used, so minor variations did not really matter. This is not an attitude we can take, given the need to give clear guidelines. I am carrying on work on this topic and will try to formulate rules. --] 23:19, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I am grateful for the work you are doing Gary, and I am sure a lot of people here are also very impressed by the what you are doing.

I think what we all need to do is remember that this "dead time" between elections is the best time to sort out policy once and for all. If we do not, then by the time the 2009/10 election comes around, there will be a mess we may not be able to handle. ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 07:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I just came back here after noticing the redirected discussion at ]. It seems to me that others are right, and this constituency naming qustion is a big outstanding problem (and also that we should be very grateful for GaryJ and the others who have done so much of the research on this).

It seems to me that Gary J is right in saying official guidelines don't help us much, because they are inconsistent, both between constituencies and even wrt to the same constituency. Until very recently, I don't think that the concept of an "official" name is actually very sustainable: the "official" approach seems to have been to use a name which is a good enough descriptor, with little concern about consistency.

I can see several possible approaches:
*Try to follow "official" names, as used when the constituency was created
*:''Problem: for older constituencies (pre 1832), the documentation is likely to be hard to access, if it even exists''
*Try to assess what was the most commonly-used "official" name
*:''inevitably a compromise, and it would be a massive historical effort. Anyone ant to spend a few years in a library? &lt;grin&gt;''
*Abandon hope of consistency, and just live with whatever we've got
*:''Seems likly to lead to a lot of confusion, particularly in the category listings and in the {{cl|MPs elected in UK elections}} lists''
*Devise our own set of rules, even if it sometimes clashes with a clear format used in official documents

I have a strong preference for the last approach, of devising our own set of rules.

'''''If''''' that principle is acceptable, think I can break the problem down to a list of decision points (which may not be complete):

#Compass points:
#:either
#:# (my preference) place compass points after geogaphical name in ''all'' cases (e.g. Borsetshire South West)<br />''or''
#:# place compass points after geogaphical name for borough constituencies, but before for county constituencies
#:#:This appears to be the current "official" approach, which carries an obvious appeal, but leads to some bizarre inconsistencies (such as ] and ], which are really confusing for the reader: see for example the list at ]); and the distinction between county and borough consistencies is unlikley to be readily apparent to the non-expert reader, which makes for further confusion. That's why I prefer the same approach for both county and borough: it's kindest to the reader

#City and Borough prefixes: do we say "]" or just "]"?
#:This one seems harder to me: there seems to have been a clear shift in "official" usage, with the borough prefix being rare (or maybe entirely absent?) in the nineteenth century, and near universal in major cities from 1974 onwards … and that the shift in "official" nomenclature seems to have been accompanied by a similar shift in usage in parliament and in the press.
#:options:
#:#Always using the city/borough prefix
#:#:tempting, but it becomes very confusing in the ninieteenth century, and in the first half of the twentieth century, when local gocernment was frequently restructued
#:#Never use the city/borough prefix
#:#:Probably the worst option, to my mind, because the contemporary city constituencies (e.g. ] have for several decades been consistently referred in both popular and official usage with the city prefix, and the same goes for many of the post-1974 London constitencies such as ] and ].
#:#Use a roughly historical system: so before 1974, we have ], and after 1974 we have ]
#:#:That may sound a little odd, particularly in the Deptford case where we have two articles (my split), but I see many advantages to it, because the boundaries of urban constituencies usually changed quite radically over time as the inner cities depopulated (consider Bethnal Green, which onc had two constituencies and now shares one), and a consistent name is actually rather misleading.
#The comma with city or borough prefixes (] or ]):
#:Again, we seem to have a historical change in "official usage": the comma appears to be a late-20th century addition. I think that the options are either to standardise on one or the other, or to again follow a historical pattern.
#:My preference is ''not'' to use the comma, because it doesn't seem to have caught on in public usage, and because it seems to me to cause a little confusion with the "list" style of names sch as ].

What do others think? --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 16:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

:Thanks for putting those suggestions together. I agree that we will not find a system which matches the most common style used in official documents for every period. With one exception, my preference would be to standardise on the current system, since it is relatively well-known, is often used in articles anyway, and no previous system seems to have been universally applied. The one exception would be in the use of commas, where I agree with your reasoning.

:One difficulty with your proposal would be that should we standardise on compass points after placenames, we would get (for example) ], which sounds odd and is uncommon. I don't agree that SW Milton Keynes and Milton Keynes NE are too confusing for the reader - the difference is readily explained, this may well be the only constituency for which this is an issue, and redirects can be put in place for any errors. One problem which would need some consideration is in county constituencies which later become borough constituencies.

:Finally, trying to split borough prefixes, as with Deptford and Lewisham Deptford seems likely to create more confusion. Unless they understand a subtle change in terminology in 1974, people seem likely to link to either, whichever they mean. Was there any signficant change to the constituency, other than to its name, in 74? If not, shouldn't we keep the article together? ] '']'' 18:18, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

::Hi Warofdreams, thanks for such a quick reply. A few quick thoughts:

::*I don't really agree that current formulaton of prefix for counties, suffix for boroughs is that widely understood &mdash; I have worked in around parliament for two decades and only became aware of it in the last few months when I started looking at the boundary commission reports. I very much doubt that any understanding of the distinction extends beyond a small class of political obsessives, and I suggest that we should be focusing on what's easiest for the reader.
::*I agree that Surrey Mid sounds weird, though if my memory serves me right, it has been used in Parliament a lot. My main conern it that it should be indexed under "Surrey Mid" rather than "Mid Surrey", so that in lists it doesn't end up buried alongside Midlothian. That could be achieved by indexing, or by giving it the article name of "Surrey Mid" but beginning the text with "Mid Surrey is a constituency...". That seems to me to be similar to the situation we have with people's names, where an article called "Fred Blogs" may begin "Sir James Alfred Blogs, 37th Viscount Zebedee, known as Fred Blogs..."
::*If we use the current system, what would you envisage with indexing and lists? My real bugbear is that I hate finding that e.g. North Down and South Down are not beside each other under D, but jumbled in with dozens of others under S and N
::*On the Deptford/Lewisham Deptford dilemma, I don't have details of the historical boundaries, but in recent changes, it seemed that the constituency is extending ever-further south-eastwards, and that Deptford appears now to be the NW corner of the constituency. In have inferred that the boundaries have probably drifted over time, and that the major shift is likely to have followed the abolition of the ] and its incoproration into Lewisham. That in itself raises a historical problem: Deptford was not part of Lewisham before 1974, and as a historian I dislike the idea of a historical anachronism such as an ] being labelled as an MP for Lewisham Deptford: it distorts the readers' understanding of how London was organised at the time.
::*As to Milton Keynes, isn't the naming detail something which should be covered in the text of the articles? I'm sure that for most purposes, journalists and politicians refer to the constituencies as if their names were formulated in the same way, and for our purposes hete it seems to me that distinction is a technical one which should defnitely be covered in the arrtucles, but which we shouldn't allow to get in the way of strightforward indexing. The situation at http://www.parliament.uk/directories/hciolists/alcm.cfm , with one indexed under M and the other under N is a really pain for the reader. --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 19:13, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

:::I have to say I find the suffix often strange, especially for seats that would be rendered "Fermanagh and Tyrone South" (just sounds weird), "Down North" (when the district council is "North Down"), "Staffordshire South" (ditto) and so forth. I think keeping to the current official names works best, rather than open up a can of worms and have chaos when the other uses of the phrase are the other way round. ] 20:00, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

::::Tim, I agree about "Fermanagh and Tyrone South", but find that my idea of what's strange is inconsistent. I always think of Enoch Powell as having been MP for South Down, but Clement Freud as having been ousted from Cambridgeshire North East; neither North East Cambridgeshire nor Down South sounds right to me. Simlarly I think of North Devon, but Clwyd South West. (The MP Clwyd South West now repesents Clwyd South, and on says "I am MARTYN JONES, Member of Parliament for CLWYD SOUTH". I can' think of any rule for what sounds right :( --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 22:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

::Hi BrownHairedGirl. A few responses to your above thoughts:

::*You're right, saying that the current formulation is "widely understood" was wrong. I should have said that it is widely used.
::*I'm unconvinced that we use indexing concerns when deciding on the naming of articles. By piping, we can easily index in any order we choose. Where an articles is called "Fred Blogs", it is because that is his most common name, and his official title is less commonly used. That is a different situation to that being discussed here.
::*I entirely agree that when indexing the divisions of Down should be placed together, regardless of the word order in their common names or article titles, just as the divisions of Belfast are placed together. It makes lists far more usable.
::*Thanks for the reasoning on the Deptford/Lewisham Deptford articles. Again, I feel that this might be better discussed within a single article, presumably entitled "Lewisham Deptford (UK Parliament constituency)", with results and MP lists divided and discussion placed in the introduction and boundaries sections as to the exact changes of name and area. I am not familiar with the history of this constituency, but it seems unlikely to me that the 1974 changes were so dramatic as to essentially create a new constituency. Of course, many constituencies change their boundaries every review, but I think it is generally best to treat these changes within a single article.
::*Absolutely, the Milton Keynes naming detail should be covered in the text of the articles, but that doesn't mean that the article names cannot be correct. Googling suggests that MKSW is pretty much exclusively referred to by its correct name, while NEMK is referred to by its correct name about four times out of five - this suggests to me that while in casual conversation the constituencies may be treated as if their names were formulated in the same way, that most of the time, people do use the official name. ] '']'' 02:00, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

== South Molton discrepancies ==

Can anyone help with a definitive answer to the question of when the ] was abolished? See ] or a full explanation of the problem (Rayment is self-contradictory here), and I suggest that's the best place to discuss it. Thanks in advance for any light anyone can shed on this!--] <sup>] • (])</sup> 10:40, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

:Thanks to ] for clarifying this one promptly. Now sorted. --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 15:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

== Conservative or Unionist party tags in Scotland ==

I think we need to discuss this as some people use four different variations for the tag when creating pages/adding boxes.
This can cause a great deal of confusion, especially in some cases I've seen where National Liberal candidates have been listed as or changed to Unionist. My own preference is to follow FWS Craig strictly and list MOST Scottish Conservative and Unionist candidates/MPs as simply 'Conservative' as Craig has done. After all Craig was himself a Scottish Conservative and Unionist and who would know better the appropriate tag.

That said, I don't want to over-ride someone who has a better source or more uptodate accurate information. So if people could provide some feedback/ opinions here I'd very much appreciate it. Thanks ] 12:02, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

:Looks like a complex subject. Is it since 1918 that we have had candidates' own 'descriptions' on nomination and ballot papers? ] 14:36, 12 October 2006 (UTC).

::No - I think that didn't come in until about 1969. Even then it was literally just the candidate's (or rather their agent's) own wording so local variations could persist and mavericks could use a party label with no official support from that party (who couldn't block them) - in ] in 1997 there was (famously) a candidate with the label "Liberal Democrat Top Choice for Parliament" and another (the official party nominee ]) with "Liberal Democrat Leader Paddy Ashdown".

::I have Craig's 1918-1949 volume to hand and here's what he says on this in the notes at the start:

:::'''UNIONISTS and ULSTER UNIONISTS''' Conservative candidates in Scotland stand under the auspices of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association, and until the association added the word 'Conservative' to its title in April 1965, the majority of candidates ran as Unionists.

:::In Northern Ireland, Conservative candidates are sponsored by the Ulster Unionist Council and run as Unionists.

:::Throughout this book, Unionists in Scotland and Northern Ireland are designated as Conservatives.

::(Similarly elsewhere in the notes Craig states that all ] candidates, with the sole exception of Belfast West in 1924, were endorsed by the Labour Party in London. As a result all their candidates are listed as "Lab" except the aforementioned who is "NI Lab".)

::Bear in mind that Craig was working with paper, was mainly focused on the parties at Westminster (for example in the chaos of candidate labels for 1918 he generally follows what whip the MPs took on arrival at the Commons), and was faced with a situation where party labels were not as rigid and uniform as they are today. There was a very telling cartoon in the papers in the run up to the 1955 election that showed a row of identical candidates, with almost every conceivable variant of "National Liberal and Conservative" used! Craig's book is trying to make things easy to understand on an overall basis, rather than reflecting the local tradition. It would look odd to use Craig's labelling rigidly for Scotland and not for Northern Ireland.

::(Nor for that matter were party colours uniform in the past - ] recalls being selected as Conservative PPC for Wallsall in the early 1960s and going out canvassing in a blue rossete, upon which he was immediately congratulated by an old woman who'd waited a long time to see a Liberal candidate!)

::] 15:10, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks re 'descriptions' on nomination and ballot papers. Now that I think about it, I can remember them coming in. Until circa 1969 there were just candidates' names on ballot papers, with no party label. Perhaps 1970, in terms of election dates, when 'descriptions' were first used on ballot papers? ] 15:50, 12 October 2006 (UTC).

: To get to the heart of the issue, do we use the same method as Craig: giving the Whip taken at Westminster, hence a Conservative Tag or do we Use Conservative for candidates Prior to 1910, Unionist to the 1960's and Conservative again after? I can see merits on both sides of the argument: The former approach being better for the casual user, the latter being better for the purists. ] 23:30, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

::1970 was the first general election in which descriptions appeared on ballot papers. There were descriptions before that, but they generally gave the candidate's profession from which political allegiance was not always obvious. Local party colours are an interesting tradition, and they date from a long time ago: have a look in Dod's Electoral Facts where there is a list from the mid-19th century. Remember also the instances recorded in Craig's footnotes where an official party candidate decided to present themselves to the electors under a different 'label' eg Conservatives fighting as "Labour in the Conservative interest" or Liberals as Independents. The Revolutionary Communist Party fought in 1987 as "Red Front".

::There isn't any really good accessible source for whether a candidate presented themselves as a Conservative or a Unionist in Scotland. The Press Association list is reasonably accurate as to which of the 57 varieties of 'Liberal and Conservative' 'Conservative and National Liberal' etc. an individual candidate had. ]. &#147;] ] ]&#148;. 09:20, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

:::The ] case isn't quite the same; the RCP saw it as a broader organisation of the ] or ] type, they just weren't very successful at getting anyone else to join. ] '']'' 13:48, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

== Project directory ==

Hello. The ] has recently updated the ]. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at ], listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding ], ], and ] are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. ] 17:32, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

== St George's Hanover Square ==

We now have two articles on the same constituency: ] and ].

Does anyone have any evidence as whether that the constituency was ever offically named with the Westminster prefix, and if so, when the prefix was added? --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 00:18, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

:According to Craig ] changed its name in 1918 to ]. Hope this helps. ] 01:02, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

:: The ] seems to be the one to keep as its the most informative to the casual user plus its the later name and I think we've been using that as a guidline so best to stick with it. ] 01:08, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

:::Fair enough, ] sounds OK to me. In situations such as this, I think it's best to stick with the later name (unless there are massive boundary changes which effectively make it a new constituency, as with ]'s 1997 change), and as you say it's clearer anyway. I'll merge the two now. --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 16:37, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

::::merge completed. --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 17:57, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

:::::It shouldn't have been. They are different constituencies. The boundary on the eastern side is changed around Constitution Hill and the Hamlet of Knightsbridge moved into the constituency after 1918; St. George's, Hanover Square was not a division of Westminster. ]. &#147;] ] ]&#148;. 14:01, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

:::: I know there were boundary changes ] but Craig has Erskine, the Independent Conservative candidate in 1921 being selected to stand by the 'St. George's, Hanover Square, Independent Conservative Association' for ] which I think suggests a good degree on continuity at the time between them. ] 17:18, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

:::::Hold on. That's just what his association was called, not what the constituency was called. The approach has been to regard constituencies with the same name as continuances even if there is no continuity of voters: see the single article for ], where the constituency after 1983 contained not one single voter who was in it before 1983. In this constituency the two names were different: St. George's, Hanover Square is not the same as Westminster, St. George's. If we are judging continuity by names, we must be consistent. ]. &#147;] ] ]&#148;. 17:34, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

:::::Local associations sometimes have different names to the seat - from recollection the Conservative constituency association in ] is "Reigate & Banstead". St George's in the early 1920s was confused because there were ''two'' Conservative associations - for one reason or another they hadn't realigned when the constituencies changed in 1918. This (and similar antices in the neighbouring Westminster Abbey seat) made some of the elections in the period etm interesting. ] 18:16, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

::::I do see your point ] and I'm not saying I disagree with you but we do have examples of such continuity between name changes of seats: Caernarfon being one as it was originally Caernarvon Boroughs, but there is no dispute that they are the same seat, albeit with boundary changes though the years. Now London boundaries is not an area that I'm at all familiar with so I don't know if there is any great continuity between them both. If there is not then they do need to be separate pages. Its really only Craigs remarks in his 1918-1945 volume that leads me to think they are the same. ] 17:52, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

:::::"There is no dispute that they are the same seat" - there is now. They are not the same seat. Caernarfon at present is the successor to Caernarvonshire, not Caernarvon Boroughs; the nearest successor to that is Conwy. ]. &#147;] ] ]&#148;. 17:59, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

:] I see that you have gone ahead and split them. Would it not have been better to wait for input into the discussion from ] and others before going ahead with unilateral action? Oh and while I don't know much about London Boundaries, you can be sure I am 100% certain of my facts about North Wales :) ] 18:04, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

::Pending the outcome of the discussion, I have reverted the split.
::Fys's information on the boundaries is useful, and thanks for that. It seems clear to me that the boundary changes are not so huge that the two are, as Fys says, "diferent constituencies": from Fys's descriptoon, it seems that they are substantially the same, with a chunk added at Knightsbridge, and a little removed or added elsewhere.
::Fys's point that "St. George's, Hanover Square was not a division of Westminster" is crucial: of course it wasn't, because the ] was not created until 1900, 15 years after the 1885 redistribution. The Westminster prefix could therefore not have been used as a disambiguator in 1885, which is why Hanover Sq had to be used instead.
::The 1918 renaming reflcted the fact that a clearer disambiguator was now available, folloing the format of ''City Area'' used in other cities. It did not amount to a substantive remaning; instead it was a change of disambiguator, equivalent to the addition of the Liverpool prefix to the Toxteth seats.
::I would agree to an article split if the new constituency was called Westminster North, or something else completely different, but rhe information which Fys has kindly supplied contains nothing which persuades me to regard treating the constituencies as separate entities. By Fys's descripton, what happened was a nontrivial but relatively minor boundary adjustment, accompanied by a recasting of the existing name. --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 23:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC)


== Notional election results ==
:::Don't revert the split. I was being ] and also being accurate; you're removing information which I added. That's vandalism. In any case I've checked and the official name was in fact ]. I will put it there. Incidentally I do know more about this than you: I have lived in Westminster in effect since leaving university and am now a Citizen (work that one out). ]. &#147;] ] ]&#148;. 23:36, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
{{archive top|In this discussion, and in others that have taken place recently, the community attempts to decide whether to include notional results after boundary changes. LawNerd123 adopts a stalwart and persistent, and rather well-argued, stance that they should be omitted. Everyone else who expressed a preference feels they should be included; but "everyone else" is a small number of editors.{{pb}}Rightly, LawNerd123 attempts to attract more attention to the discussion using the RfC mechanism, but the RfC has expired and nobody uninvolved has expressed a view. Now the matter has come to the Administrator's Noticeboard for resolution.{{pb}}Editors have been stuck on this for too long, and it is creating too much strife. It now requires a prompt resolution. Owing to low participation from the community, I can speak to the community's view only with low confidence; but I would have to say that the community's decision is to '''include notional results''' where these appear in normally-reliable sources such as the BBC.{{pb}}''Scope:'' This decision applies to articles about UK Parliamentary constituencies since the ]. I say this because the community hasn't given me much input on the intended scope of this decision, so I have construed the scope as narrowly as possible, in order not to restrict the community's freedom to make different decisions where the circumstances require it.{{pb}}''Review:'' This decision can be overturned by the community in a subsequent discussion in any appropriate place. Because of the limited number of editors who participated here and low confidence in its outcome, overturning this decision will not need a full RfC.{{pb}}Finally, I would just like to note that improvements and clarifications to our article on ] would be very, very welcome here.—]&nbsp;<small>]/]</small> 11:35, 13 October 2024 (UTC)|INCLUDE NOTIONAL RESULTS}}


Please correct me if this has been addressed elsewhere, but is there a policy on whether notional results following boundary changes should be included in the election results section or not. As the previously included 2019 notional results are being removed and I strongly believe that they provide vital context to results following boundary changes. ] (]) 17:52, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
== West Yorkshire 1865-1885 ==


:{{ping|Sam11333}} "Being removed" from where? Individual constituency results, or one (or more) of the big lists? (I agree that they are important for context - how else do we explain that the not-renamed ] is described as a Lib Dem gain from Conservative when it has been held by the same Lib Dem since 2005?) ]] 17:59, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
In 1865, the constituency with Rayment lists as Yorkshire West Riding was divided into three new constituencies, which Rayment lists as Yorkshire West Riding East, Yorkshire West Riding North, and Yorkshire West Riding South (each of which was further subdivided by the ], to address the massive under-representation of industrial West Yorkshire).
::From the individual constituency results for example ] ] (]) 18:01, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
:::Ah, I see. I've added a note at ] to get more eyes on this. ]] 18:09, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
::::I appreciate that, thank you. ] (]) 18:11, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
::These are not used historically on Misplaced Pages, add serious confusion, and create a misapplication of loss and gain in the results when it should win as a result of new boundaries or a new seat. The notional results are not included after previous periodic reviews and should not be arbitrarily and confusingly added or retained on articles now. The confusion is too great and somehow makes out two academics get carte blanche to decide how a seat would have voted. That is delving into nice crystal ball territory even if two academics do it. What next we go back to the Welsh assembly elections of 1999 and say those seats somehow had notional results? Absolute madness to even consider it. This is no different. If there is desperation to include this, then add it in the text of the article with a see also link to the notional results on the periodic review page. That way consistency is maintained throughout the years of election articles, no confusing change in vote share based for new seats or new boundaries is posited, and the correct result of a new boundary win or new seat win is listed as opposed to the phoney loss or gain based on notional results. For example, the notional results were the Lib Dems only defending 8 seats where in reality at the dissolution of the last parliament they had 15 seats and had had 11 at the start of the parliament or that the Conservatives somehow out of pieces of paper and lines being drawn and looked at by two academics say the conservatives somehow were defending 7 additional seats, pure confusion. ] (]) 18:09, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
:::Work done by two academics, yes, but given a certain amount of weight by being which says of it: "{{tq|BBC News, ITV News, Sky News and the Press Association have together produced estimates of the 2019 general election result as if the new constituencies recommended by the separate Parliamentary Boundary Commissions for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had then been in existence.}}" ]] 18:27, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
::::That's jolly nice but it is confusing and creates a barrier to understanding. There is nothing wrong with explaining it in the text, its current presentation gives false impressions, confusing vote changes, and incorrect outcomes i.e not listing as new boundary or new seat wins. Additionally this feels like trying to fix something on Misplaced Pages which isn't broken. The results pages AFAICS have not included this before without any problem, so why now?
::::The following"BBC News, ITV News, Sky News and the Press Association have together produced estimates of the 2019 general election result" is great if this was for media consumption, election night discussion, or being a news site. All of which Misplaced Pages are not. When the dust has settled as did in 2010 no one remembers or cares about the notional results, just who won, not who was said to have one thanks to academia and media crystal balling no matter how good it is claimed to be. ] (]) 18:37, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
:::It is incorrect to say that notional results have not been used historically on Misplaced Pages. For example Edinburgh South West was new in 2005 and the difference from the notional 2001 share of vote was shown from 8 May 2005. The notional change in 2005 was still there in July and August 2024. Notional changes are useful to help understand changes in voting patterns and how much of the change is likely due to boundary changes. Highlight that the ‘before’ base for the change is a notional estimate, but don’t delete information which can be valuable. ] (]) 22:31, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
::The simple answer to this “how else do we explain that the not-renamed Westmorland and Lonsdale is described as a Lib Dem gain from Conservative when it has been held by the same Lib Dem since 2005”
::List the outcome correctly as a New boundaries win and include the boundary changes in the main bulk of the text like in the boundaries section. ] (]) 00:42, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
:I feel they should probably be included. For constituencies where the boundaries remained *exactly* the same they're unnecessary but for those that did not they're useful for comparison purposes and match the comparisons to notional results made by reliable sources. ] (]) 18:36, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
::I agree include if you really want but not in the election results table format. If you really want to include, then include in the text, not in table format in and amongst the results. Additionally, some pages having notional results and others not is inconsistent and confusing. It will easily lead to "well why does this page have notional results and this page does not?" It is just a confusion creator. It must be remembered that Misplaced Pages is to serve the widest possible audience not just those with prior knowledge or understanding of a topic or subject. ] (]) 18:40, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
:::One thing that puzzles me is why most of our 2024 results boxes have either {{tlx|Election box hold with party link}} or {{tlx|Election box gain with party link}}. This is fine for existing constituencies where the boundaries were unchanged - or nearly so - but we should not be dropping every constituency into one or the other of these slots. Other templates exist, such as {{tlx|Election box new seat win}} and {{tlx|Election box new boundary win}}. I used the latter at ]. --] &#x1f339; (]) 22:30, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
::::Because people just copy from elsewhere. I've changed a few to {{tlx|Election box new seat win}}. ] ] 12:12, 7 August 2024 (UTC)


To everyone arguing the toss to keep in notional results these comments sum up perfectly the problem. National results are a barrier to understanding as no one apart from political hacks and a few academics have any idea what the actual earthly idea a Notional Result is: {{diff|Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard|prev|1248620915|here}} ----] (]) 12:55, 3 October 2024 (UTC) 12:55, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
Those names sound a little clumsy to me, but I can't think of any neater way of naming them. Does anyone know what Craig calls them? --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 16:32, 30 October 2006 (UTC)


:If people find ] and notional changes confusing, wouldn’t it be better to refer them to the ] page, rather than deleting some of the notional changes? ] (]) 17:00, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
:I have a feeling that Craig calls them 'Yorkshire (West Riding) East' etc, but thats just from memory I'm afraid, so I can't say for definate as its a good few years since I last read anything before the 1885-1918 edition. ] 00:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
{{archive bottom}}


== Percentage Changes in election boxes ==
::Craig calls them (e.g.) "YORKSHIRE (West Riding), NORTHERN". The Boundary Commisioners' report of 1868 called them "The West Riding of Yorkshire, Northern Division" but indexed them under Y. F.H. McCalmont had "YORKSHIRE (West Riding - Northern Division)". Contemporary Whitaker's Almanacks had "YORKSHIRE (W. Riding, N. Div.)". ]. &#147;] ] ]&#148;. 13:58, 5 November 2006 (UTC)


Can the percentage bar for changes in percentages still be kept in please for the general elections where boundary have taken place. Removing them does not look neat or tidy please, thank you. ] (]) 16:20, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
== University seat names ==


:This is style over substance and not a helpful retention. "Removing them does not look neat or tidy" is not a substantive reason for retention it is a call for aesthetics over purpose. The removal indicates that no change is possible when a new seat is drawn and new boundaries are drawn. ] (]) 23:32, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
Is there any definitive source for the names? ] shows several using a different name form from the institution, although the convention for naming pages on UK universities is the current "brand name" rather than the official name or what's historically been used the most (e.g. it's now "]" not "University of Durham").
::I strongly disagree with what LawNerd123 is saying. It has been standard Misplaced Pages practice in the past to include changes in notional results in UK Parliament constituency articles, like notional results for the 2005 general election for 2010 results and notational results for the 1992 UK general election for the 1997 UK general election. It would be terrible to take away notational change information when that information is very useful. We need a ruling on this. ] (]) 03:23, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
::I can see both sides here. Notional results are used by BBC, Sky etc having been calculated by professors in an official capacity, and they can be cited easily enough. To reach a comprise, can't we show the notional results without including percentage changes? ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 04:13, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
:::I have no objection to Notional results being in the main text of the article. It is though misleading in the election results as notional results are not people voting but a psephological calculation. I am not opposed to a notion results text section containing all of the notional results for a seat. This in my opinion only applies to boundary changes and not new seats as a new seat is a new seat and that has never had the electorate it currently has in any way shape or form prior to being created. ] (]) 23:04, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
::::You're removing all of them though. Is there anyway we can get LawNerd123 to stop removing percentage changes until a decision has been made on this. And I don't agree with LawNerd123 on new seats. I think percentage changes and notional results should be included for new seats also. We still need a ruling on this. ] (]) 23:33, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
:::::No compelling or policy reason for retention has been given for keeping the confusing, and mathematically misleading information. If you want a separate section on notional results and to put it in the pros be my guest. Notional results are not elections no one voted in a national result, they are academic calculations. So listing them in elections is misleading, confusing and downright incorrect. ] (]) 00:40, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
::::::But you don't have consensus to make such a sweeping decision. When every media source uses notional results as a starting off point, Misplaced Pages has to at least consider referencing them, surely? ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 03:44, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
:::::::Considering that consensus was attempted and there was silence I went with the bold. There is no point hanging around forever waiting for people yo reply when you have done all you can to initiate a discussion. the argument of "wait forever on a wall of silence goes against the very essence of Misplaced Pages which is to make the changes and discuss them afterwards. Making the changes and then having a discussion no one took part in is not an excuse for others to go well you don't have consensus. That is ridiculous. Finally, the "every media source" argument is the biggest red herring and failure of decision-making and not analysing the merits of something that could be argued. ] (]) 00:51, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
We should keep the notional figures, as in , but we should make it clearer that the percentages relate to the notional 2019 result - perhaps adding a footnote to the column header which links to a note saying "Percentage change is shown relative to the 2019 ] for the revised boundaries / the new seat" with a link to the notional result on the parliamentary website. ]] 07:22, 6 September 2024 (UTC)


:I personally would be in favour of a completely separate section, and if there is to be an inclusion of these notional results there has to be inclusion of notional results going all the way back to when they started. Otherwise it is selective inclusion of the information which is the worst possible outcome. This is though only for seats with boundary changes. For new seats notional results are the ultimate confusion. A new seat has never been contested before and should not give any impression that it has in any way shape or form. ] (]) 00:53, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Craig's 1918-1950 volume (1922 for the Irish universities) uses the following headers:
::I disagree. There is no logical difference between a new seat and a seat which has kept its name with 50% change in voters. ]] 03:59, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
:::Then by that logic there can be no change in percentage shown as the boundaries for a boundary change and a new seat have no people voting companion (an election) just some confusing academic research. I wholly agree with your position of no change in percentage being shown for election results for new seats or new boundaries. ] (]) 19:26, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
::::No, by my logic the official notional figures can be used to provide percentage changes both for new and for changed seats. ]] 23:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
:::::The easiest way to create confusion is to add in changes in votes from a fictional election. A good academic theory notional elections are but a notional election is a fictional election. ] (]) 00:02, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
::::::This is not a ‘fictional election’, it is a baseline to give context for how a new seat voted in real life. All media organisations use notional results and it would be ridiculous for Misplaced Pages to be the exception. ] (]) 22:38, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
:::::::It is when no one goes to the polls and it is done in a university on a spreadsheet. This In an encyclopaedia not a media outlet or a news site. ] (]) 23:14, 25 September 2024 (UTC)


Notional results are used by all authoritative news organisations (e.g. the BBC - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c06k8ge1ng7o.amp) and they are also used by Parliament itself (https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/). Notionals are a tool to reduce confusion and are uniformly treated as such elsewhere. One user’s personal problems with them clearly should not trump every source on the web. <!-- Template:Unsigned --><small class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) 26 September 2024 (UTC)</small>
*Cambridge University
:Agreed. ]] 09:43, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
*Combined English Universities
*London University
*Oxford University
*University of Wales
*Combined Scottish Universities
*Queen's University of Belfast


:I strongly disagree with the sheep approach above of well so and so does it do
...but obviously nothing for Dublin, National University of Ireland, Edinburgh and St Andrews or Glasgow and Aberdeen. Currently all the ones on the list above are at those locations bar Queen's.
:let’s be zombies and just lose all critical analysis and reason and follow blindly.
:They were not used for 2010 and 2005 or earlier boundary changes so why add them now this is recentism gone wild. It’s also a POV violation to only add for 2024. Add all or none.
:There is no value having a confusing notional result
:There is no value listing seats as held or gained when they are new seats or new boundaries. That is just completely and 100% wrong and misleading.
:All I’m seeing as an argument is other use them so we should be sheep
:Which is no argument at all.
:I’ve offered alternatives like add a separate section or add in the pros but that seems to be conveniently ignored by the bulls here trying to impose without trying to find any common ground. ] (]) 00:31, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
::What a bizarre comment. UK election results are presented with changes from notionals. This is non-controversial, hence the sources I posted above all using them, except seemingly with you.
::Notionals provide helpful context for the reader, and it is unfortunate that they are not included for every set of new boundaries on Misplaced Pages (though they are on many pages). ] (]) 08:10, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
:::The biggest problem is when there are brand new seats with some magical perception and some magic gain or hold input
:::a new seat is a new seat and that has never been fought before and to claim anything other than a new seat win is preposterous. Additionally couponing vote changes is just flat out confusing and wrong.
:::like wise new boundaries are new boundaries just the same name no I e has ever actually done any voting on those boundaries. Listing them as anything but new boundary wins is misleading and inaccurate. Likewise claiming some percentage changes is fanciful and confusing.
:::The claims of well we’ve done notional before dies not make it accurate, correct or the right carry on. Fixing things which are wrong would never be done with that approach.
:::If you are hell bent on having some of this notional stuff add it in the text but leave it out if the election results as a notional result is not an election but an academic calculation.
:::Stick to actual voting in the election results not academic exercises no matter how many news outlets use them to claim as so called actual election result. ] (]) 00:17, 28 September 2024 (UTC)
::{{tq|I strongly disagree with the sheep approach above of well so and so does it do}}: but that's just it: Misplaced Pages does follow what other reliable independent published sources do, such as the BBC news announcements of election results. ]] 20:49, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
:::You have changed your tune since you commented on my talk page after I updated Westmorland and Lonsdale. It cannot be right to simply go well the news uses it so we must. That would mean nothing gets verified and violate ]. ] (]) 00:19, 28 September 2024 (UTC)
::::On the contrary, the two sources for the note I have just added to ] make it quite clear that reliable sources call this seat a "Green win from Conservative". I can't remember what I first said about W&L and haven't the stamina to check, being involved in real life matters like hospital visits. I know I didn't know anything about notional results before seeing them reported in Misplaced Pages, and now understand them to be a source used by all main media and the Parliament website itself in calculating swings.
::::The distinction between "new seat" (eg Waveney Valley), "old seat dramatically changed by boundary changes but retaining same name" (eg Leeds NW), old seat given new name but pretty much unchanged, and other variations is pretty meaningless. In each case, we should follow the reliable sources of BBC and other media and Parliamentary website, and use the notional 2019 results as the baseline for changes, just as they do. To do otherwise verges on ]. Too stressed and tired to fight this one, keeping my energy for commutes to hospital. I hope some other editors will weigh in on this. ]] 20:25, 28 September 2024 (UTC)


:::::I see no reason to call a seat a gain when it is a new seat or new boundaries when that is the accurate and correct verbiage.
Since these were historic seats, I think the current university brand should be irrelevant to the article location. But what should we use? ] 18:36, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
:::::It is not OR to call something what it is that is a stretch when clearly the bright line.
:::::Any change in boundaries with the same name is a new boundaries win.
:::::Any new boundaries with a new name is a new seat.
:::::This is not OR and it is dishonest to claim it is OR.
:::::"it quite clear that reliable sources call this seat a "Green win from Conservative"". this is easily covered in the boundaries section as this is where it should be listed. That is a claim made by the academics. You can have news media outlets use the notional but that does not make it the actual accurate election results. it is just an academic calculation of the boundaries likely to have returned based on the new boundaries at a previous election. It is not an actual election in any way shape or form.
Finally, the change in the number of seats has nothing to do with the actual election results when the boundaries are all changed, please. News media are desperate to give numbers to make their lives easier, but that does not mean that they are basing the numbers they are giving as accurate reflections of an actual election that took place previously.
:::::Finally the personal aside about hospitals is not relevant as it is attempting to attack me through the use of 'woe is me I give in". Please refrain from that kind of tactic as it is manipulative. ] (]) 01:02, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
::::::You must realise that your approach is simply ‘I don’t trust these academics and the rest of the world be damned’.
::::::That is not productive. Notional results are an integral part of the reporting of UK election results. It is unfortunate that you don’t agree with that, but that’s just how it is.
::::::I am relatively ambivalent about whether a seat is reported as a gain/hold or new seat (though gain/hold is the accurate way to report it) but voteshare changes are integral. ] (]) 06:41, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
:::::::No it’s not, and your claims and conclusion-jumping are nonsense.
:::::::The claims you make are simply a personal attack trying to cast aspersions.
:::::::This boils down to claiming notional results and actual elections are the same they are not. ] (]) 15:49, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
::::::::I made no personal attack against you (rather rich from someone who has just attacked another user for having the temerity to get ill) but I apologise if you took it that way.
::::::::What I did was make a simple statement of fact. Your argument against including the notional results boils down to the fact that you personally don’t like them. I personally do like them and find them useful, so let’s call that 1-1.
::::::::However this site is not a personal plaything for either of us, and I (and others) have produced several highly reputable sources who use notionals. Can you produce any reputable sources which do not use notional results? ] (]) 19:13, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::You are stuck record and going round in belligerent circles
:::::::::it is clearly not worth trying to discuss things with you considering how toxic you are showing yourself to be
:::::::::I’ve made clear why your position is absurd yet you keep falling back on it lie a silver bunker actually give some reasons beyond see others using it and u want it in the results
:::::::::The word compromise seems vacant from your vocabulary and carry on
:::::::::You will not engage with any of the suggestions I have made and have shown contempt for the administrators notice board directions ] (]) 22:46, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
::::::::::Jesus, and you just accused '''me''' of making personal attacks. Pot calling the kettle black comes to mind.
::::::::::Sadly there is not a lot of compromise which can be achieved here, given the subject of ‘should changes be in the election box’ is either a yes or a no - though I did concede that I am ambivalent about whether boxes say ‘gain’ or ‘new seat’.
::::::::::I have asked if you can produce a source to back up your point of view. Can you? I would have to assume not. ] (]) 22:56, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
:::::::::::OK time to disengage with you you are not a person who is wiling to discuss in good faith. ] (]) 00:24, 30 September 2024 (UTC)


Per ] and because this affects hundreds of pages I am placing increased restrictions in this area. No editor is to make more than three reverts in 24 hours across the subject as a whole. Editors must also stop blind reverts and labelling other good faith contributions "vandalism". ] (]) 18:54, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
:According to ], the ] was dismantled in 1908, and the former "Queen's College, Belfast" was renamed as the ], which still appears to be its oficial name. For constistency, the constituency should also have be called QUoB, but consistency does not appear to have been a priority for those naming constituencies at tne time of its creation in 1918. In the absence to evidence to the contary, I suggest that ] should be moved to ] (which is curently a redirect). --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 12:29, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


To everyone arguing the toss to keep in notional results these comments sum up perfectly the problem. National results are a barrier to understanding as no one apart from political hacks and a few academics have any idea what the actual earthly idea a Notional Result is: {{diff|Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard|prev|1248620915|here}} --] (]) 12:55, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
== (Royal) Tunbridge Wells ==


:{{replyto|LawNerd123}} you've misunderstood my statement. It does not support including or excluding notional results. This should be obvious, because I also had no idea what the opposite of notional results is or at least I didn't before I looked into it a bit. My point was solely that people need to have some idea of what is being asked if they are able to give meaningful feedback on what's proposed and this applies whether you want to include notional results or whatever's the name for whatever you want to include. To give a very simple example, if you were to ask should we include the median wage or the mean wage, plenty of people will not understand this. In such a case, it might be relevant to offer a brief explanation or at least link to something explaining the difference. Most people are more likely to have experience with mean at least as something simplistically called an average which generally means the mean although both median and mean can be considered averages. But this doesn't mean either mean or median is clearly superior. In fact it's probably a little easier for people to understand what a median is when you explain it even if medians come up less often in general. Clearly none of this means we should never include either means or medians. Going by your logic, we shouldn't include either one! Now median vs mean is such a basic part of statistics that some might argue it's not necessary since anyone who doesn't already understand might not be able to offer meaningful feedback and I don't intend this to be a real-world example. Instead I simply used it to explain why the fact that some explanation is needed doesn't mean either is superior since you need an explanation for both of them. My whole point was plenty of people have no idea what is being asked at all, not that notionals is something inherently hard to understand. This is because you're getting into a fairly technical area of different ways elections results may be presented and probably the majority of people don't know such specifics. Even if they have experience with them, they probably have no idea what they are called. I still don't know what the sort of results you want to present are called. But whatever you call what you preferred option is, I'm guessing the vast majority of people will have no idea what this is either; and no idea what makes it different from notional. Like with the median vs mean example, the logical conclusion of this based on your reasoning is actually we shouldn't include either notionals or whatever you want to include meaning we have no results which is fairly obviously not what we want to do. ] (]) 20:48, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
] was a redlink, so have just created it as a redirect to ].


== ] listed at Requested moves==
This appears likely to be a straightforward 1983 renaming, so I have noted that in the ] article. --] <sup>] • (])</sup> 13:45, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
]A ] discussion has been initiated for ] to be moved to ]. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion ].<!-- Talk:2023 periodic review of Westminster constituencies#Requested move 19 December 2024 crosspost --> —] 22:10, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
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Notional election results

INCLUDE NOTIONAL RESULTS In this discussion, and in others that have taken place recently, the community attempts to decide whether to include notional results after boundary changes. LawNerd123 adopts a stalwart and persistent, and rather well-argued, stance that they should be omitted. Everyone else who expressed a preference feels they should be included; but "everyone else" is a small number of editors.Rightly, LawNerd123 attempts to attract more attention to the discussion using the RfC mechanism, but the RfC has expired and nobody uninvolved has expressed a view. Now the matter has come to the Administrator's Noticeboard for resolution.Editors have been stuck on this for too long, and it is creating too much strife. It now requires a prompt resolution. Owing to low participation from the community, I can speak to the community's view only with low confidence; but I would have to say that the community's decision is to include notional results where these appear in normally-reliable sources such as the BBC.Scope: This decision applies to articles about UK Parliamentary constituencies since the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies. I say this because the community hasn't given me much input on the intended scope of this decision, so I have construed the scope as narrowly as possible, in order not to restrict the community's freedom to make different decisions where the circumstances require it.Review: This decision can be overturned by the community in a subsequent discussion in any appropriate place. Because of the limited number of editors who participated here and low confidence in its outcome, overturning this decision will not need a full RfC.Finally, I would just like to note that improvements and clarifications to our article on Notional election results would be very, very welcome here.—S Marshall T/C 11:35, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Please correct me if this has been addressed elsewhere, but is there a policy on whether notional results following boundary changes should be included in the election results section or not. As the previously included 2019 notional results are being removed and I strongly believe that they provide vital context to results following boundary changes. Sam11333 (talk) 17:52, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

@Sam11333: "Being removed" from where? Individual constituency results, or one (or more) of the big lists? (I agree that they are important for context - how else do we explain that the not-renamed Westmorland and Lonsdale is described as a Lib Dem gain from Conservative when it has been held by the same Lib Dem since 2005?) PamD 17:59, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
From the individual constituency results for example Clacton Sam11333 (talk) 18:01, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Ah, I see. I've added a note at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom#Should notional 2019 results be included? to get more eyes on this. PamD 18:09, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
I appreciate that, thank you. Sam11333 (talk) 18:11, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
These are not used historically on Misplaced Pages, add serious confusion, and create a misapplication of loss and gain in the results when it should win as a result of new boundaries or a new seat. The notional results are not included after previous periodic reviews and should not be arbitrarily and confusingly added or retained on articles now. The confusion is too great and somehow makes out two academics get carte blanche to decide how a seat would have voted. That is delving into nice crystal ball territory even if two academics do it. What next we go back to the Welsh assembly elections of 1999 and say those seats somehow had notional results? Absolute madness to even consider it. This is no different. If there is desperation to include this, then add it in the text of the article with a see also link to the notional results on the periodic review page. That way consistency is maintained throughout the years of election articles, no confusing change in vote share based for new seats or new boundaries is posited, and the correct result of a new boundary win or new seat win is listed as opposed to the phoney loss or gain based on notional results. For example, the notional results were the Lib Dems only defending 8 seats where in reality at the dissolution of the last parliament they had 15 seats and had had 11 at the start of the parliament or that the Conservatives somehow out of pieces of paper and lines being drawn and looked at by two academics say the conservatives somehow were defending 7 additional seats, pure confusion. LawNerd123 (talk) 18:09, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Work done by two academics, yes, but given a certain amount of weight by being published by Parliament which says of it: "BBC News, ITV News, Sky News and the Press Association have together produced estimates of the 2019 general election result as if the new constituencies recommended by the separate Parliamentary Boundary Commissions for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had then been in existence." PamD 18:27, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
That's jolly nice but it is confusing and creates a barrier to understanding. There is nothing wrong with explaining it in the text, its current presentation gives false impressions, confusing vote changes, and incorrect outcomes i.e not listing as new boundary or new seat wins. Additionally this feels like trying to fix something on Misplaced Pages which isn't broken. The results pages AFAICS have not included this before without any problem, so why now?
The following"BBC News, ITV News, Sky News and the Press Association have together produced estimates of the 2019 general election result" is great if this was for media consumption, election night discussion, or being a news site. All of which Misplaced Pages are not. When the dust has settled as did in 2010 no one remembers or cares about the notional results, just who won, not who was said to have one thanks to academia and media crystal balling no matter how good it is claimed to be. LawNerd123 (talk) 18:37, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
It is incorrect to say that notional results have not been used historically on Misplaced Pages. For example Edinburgh South West was new in 2005 and the difference from the notional 2001 share of vote was shown from 8 May 2005. The notional change in 2005 was still there in July and August 2024. Notional changes are useful to help understand changes in voting patterns and how much of the change is likely due to boundary changes. Highlight that the ‘before’ base for the change is a notional estimate, but don’t delete information which can be valuable. David196 (talk) 22:31, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
The simple answer to this “how else do we explain that the not-renamed Westmorland and Lonsdale is described as a Lib Dem gain from Conservative when it has been held by the same Lib Dem since 2005”
List the outcome correctly as a New boundaries win and include the boundary changes in the main bulk of the text like in the boundaries section. LawNerd123 (talk) 00:42, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
I feel they should probably be included. For constituencies where the boundaries remained *exactly* the same they're unnecessary but for those that did not they're useful for comparison purposes and match the comparisons to notional results made by reliable sources. CipherRephic (talk) 18:36, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
I agree include if you really want but not in the election results table format. If you really want to include, then include in the text, not in table format in and amongst the results. Additionally, some pages having notional results and others not is inconsistent and confusing. It will easily lead to "well why does this page have notional results and this page does not?" It is just a confusion creator. It must be remembered that Misplaced Pages is to serve the widest possible audience not just those with prior knowledge or understanding of a topic or subject. LawNerd123 (talk) 18:40, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
One thing that puzzles me is why most of our 2024 results boxes have either {{Election box hold with party link}} or {{Election box gain with party link}}. This is fine for existing constituencies where the boundaries were unchanged - or nearly so - but we should not be dropping every constituency into one or the other of these slots. Other templates exist, such as {{Election box new seat win}} and {{Election box new boundary win}}. I used the latter at Belfast South and Mid Down (UK Parliament constituency). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:30, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
Because people just copy from elsewhere. I've changed a few to {{Election box new seat win}}. Rcsprinter123 (drawl) 12:12, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

To everyone arguing the toss to keep in notional results these comments sum up perfectly the problem. National results are a barrier to understanding as no one apart from political hacks and a few academics have any idea what the actual earthly idea a Notional Result is: here ----LawNerd123 (talk) 12:55, 3 October 2024 (UTC) 12:55, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

If people find notional results and notional changes confusing, wouldn’t it be better to refer them to the notional results page, rather than deleting some of the notional changes? David196 (talk) 17:00, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Percentage Changes in election boxes

Can the percentage bar for changes in percentages still be kept in please for the general elections where boundary have taken place. Removing them does not look neat or tidy please, thank you. Torres2000X (talk) 16:20, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

This is style over substance and not a helpful retention. "Removing them does not look neat or tidy" is not a substantive reason for retention it is a call for aesthetics over purpose. The removal indicates that no change is possible when a new seat is drawn and new boundaries are drawn. LawNerd123 (talk) 23:32, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with what LawNerd123 is saying. It has been standard Misplaced Pages practice in the past to include changes in notional results in UK Parliament constituency articles, like notional results for the 2005 general election for 2010 results and notational results for the 1992 UK general election for the 1997 UK general election. It would be terrible to take away notational change information when that information is very useful. We need a ruling on this. 2607:FEA8:53D7:DF00:64B3:1207:CE4D:670C (talk) 03:23, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
I can see both sides here. Notional results are used by BBC, Sky etc having been calculated by professors in an official capacity, and they can be cited easily enough. To reach a comprise, can't we show the notional results without including percentage changes? doktorb words 04:13, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
I have no objection to Notional results being in the main text of the article. It is though misleading in the election results as notional results are not people voting but a psephological calculation. I am not opposed to a notion results text section containing all of the notional results for a seat. This in my opinion only applies to boundary changes and not new seats as a new seat is a new seat and that has never had the electorate it currently has in any way shape or form prior to being created. LawNerd123 (talk) 23:04, 4 September 2024 (UTC)
You're removing all of them though. Is there anyway we can get LawNerd123 to stop removing percentage changes until a decision has been made on this. And I don't agree with LawNerd123 on new seats. I think percentage changes and notional results should be included for new seats also. We still need a ruling on this. 2607:FEA8:53D7:DF00:9801:5E1F:CCBD:7FA8 (talk) 23:33, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
No compelling or policy reason for retention has been given for keeping the confusing, and mathematically misleading information. If you want a separate section on notional results and to put it in the pros be my guest. Notional results are not elections no one voted in a national result, they are academic calculations. So listing them in elections is misleading, confusing and downright incorrect. LawNerd123 (talk) 00:40, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
But you don't have consensus to make such a sweeping decision. When every media source uses notional results as a starting off point, Misplaced Pages has to at least consider referencing them, surely? doktorb words 03:44, 6 September 2024 (UTC)
Considering that consensus was attempted and there was silence I went with the bold. There is no point hanging around forever waiting for people yo reply when you have done all you can to initiate a discussion. the argument of "wait forever on a wall of silence goes against the very essence of Misplaced Pages which is to make the changes and discuss them afterwards. Making the changes and then having a discussion no one took part in is not an excuse for others to go well you don't have consensus. That is ridiculous. Finally, the "every media source" argument is the biggest red herring and failure of decision-making and not analysing the merits of something that could be argued. LawNerd123 (talk) 00:51, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

We should keep the notional figures, as in this version, but we should make it clearer that the percentages relate to the notional 2019 result - perhaps adding a footnote to the column header which links to a note saying "Percentage change is shown relative to the 2019 notional election results for the revised boundaries / the new seat" with a link to the notional result on the parliamentary website. PamD 07:22, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

I personally would be in favour of a completely separate section, and if there is to be an inclusion of these notional results there has to be inclusion of notional results going all the way back to when they started. Otherwise it is selective inclusion of the information which is the worst possible outcome. This is though only for seats with boundary changes. For new seats notional results are the ultimate confusion. A new seat has never been contested before and should not give any impression that it has in any way shape or form. LawNerd123 (talk) 00:53, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
I disagree. There is no logical difference between a new seat and a seat which has kept its name with 50% change in voters. PamD 03:59, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
Then by that logic there can be no change in percentage shown as the boundaries for a boundary change and a new seat have no people voting companion (an election) just some confusing academic research. I wholly agree with your position of no change in percentage being shown for election results for new seats or new boundaries. LawNerd123 (talk) 19:26, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
No, by my logic the official notional figures can be used to provide percentage changes both for new and for changed seats. PamD 23:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)
The easiest way to create confusion is to add in changes in votes from a fictional election. A good academic theory notional elections are but a notional election is a fictional election. LawNerd123 (talk) 00:02, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
This is not a ‘fictional election’, it is a baseline to give context for how a new seat voted in real life. All media organisations use notional results and it would be ridiculous for Misplaced Pages to be the exception. Icc27 (talk) 22:38, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
It is when no one goes to the polls and it is done in a university on a spreadsheet. This In an encyclopaedia not a media outlet or a news site. LawNerd123 (talk) 23:14, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Notional results are used by all authoritative news organisations (e.g. the BBC - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c06k8ge1ng7o.amp) and they are also used by Parliament itself (https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/). Notionals are a tool to reduce confusion and are uniformly treated as such elsewhere. One user’s personal problems with them clearly should not trump every source on the web. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Icc27 (talk • contribs) 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. PamD 09:43, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with the sheep approach above of well so and so does it do
let’s be zombies and just lose all critical analysis and reason and follow blindly.
They were not used for 2010 and 2005 or earlier boundary changes so why add them now this is recentism gone wild. It’s also a POV violation to only add for 2024. Add all or none.
There is no value having a confusing notional result
There is no value listing seats as held or gained when they are new seats or new boundaries. That is just completely and 100% wrong and misleading.
All I’m seeing as an argument is other use them so we should be sheep
Which is no argument at all.
I’ve offered alternatives like add a separate section or add in the pros but that seems to be conveniently ignored by the bulls here trying to impose without trying to find any common ground. LawNerd123 (talk) 00:31, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
What a bizarre comment. UK election results are presented with changes from notionals. This is non-controversial, hence the sources I posted above all using them, except seemingly with you.
Notionals provide helpful context for the reader, and it is unfortunate that they are not included for every set of new boundaries on Misplaced Pages (though they are on many pages). Icc27 (talk) 08:10, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
The biggest problem is when there are brand new seats with some magical perception and some magic gain or hold input
a new seat is a new seat and that has never been fought before and to claim anything other than a new seat win is preposterous. Additionally couponing vote changes is just flat out confusing and wrong.
like wise new boundaries are new boundaries just the same name no I e has ever actually done any voting on those boundaries. Listing them as anything but new boundary wins is misleading and inaccurate. Likewise claiming some percentage changes is fanciful and confusing.
The claims of well we’ve done notional before dies not make it accurate, correct or the right carry on. Fixing things which are wrong would never be done with that approach.
If you are hell bent on having some of this notional stuff add it in the text but leave it out if the election results as a notional result is not an election but an academic calculation.
Stick to actual voting in the election results not academic exercises no matter how many news outlets use them to claim as so called actual election result. LawNerd123 (talk) 00:17, 28 September 2024 (UTC)
I strongly disagree with the sheep approach above of well so and so does it do: but that's just it: Misplaced Pages does follow what other reliable independent published sources do, such as the BBC news announcements of election results. PamD 20:49, 27 September 2024 (UTC)
You have changed your tune since you commented on my talk page after I updated Westmorland and Lonsdale. It cannot be right to simply go well the news uses it so we must. That would mean nothing gets verified and violate WP:V. LawNerd123 (talk) 00:19, 28 September 2024 (UTC)
On the contrary, the two sources for the note I have just added to Waveney Valley (UK Parliament constituency)#Elections in the 2020s make it quite clear that reliable sources call this seat a "Green win from Conservative". I can't remember what I first said about W&L and haven't the stamina to check, being involved in real life matters like hospital visits. I know I didn't know anything about notional results before seeing them reported in Misplaced Pages, and now understand them to be a source used by all main media and the Parliament website itself in calculating swings.
The distinction between "new seat" (eg Waveney Valley), "old seat dramatically changed by boundary changes but retaining same name" (eg Leeds NW), old seat given new name but pretty much unchanged, and other variations is pretty meaningless. In each case, we should follow the reliable sources of BBC and other media and Parliamentary website, and use the notional 2019 results as the baseline for changes, just as they do. To do otherwise verges on WP:OR. Too stressed and tired to fight this one, keeping my energy for commutes to hospital. I hope some other editors will weigh in on this. PamD 20:25, 28 September 2024 (UTC)
I see no reason to call a seat a gain when it is a new seat or new boundaries when that is the accurate and correct verbiage.
It is not OR to call something what it is that is a stretch when clearly the bright line.
Any change in boundaries with the same name is a new boundaries win.
Any new boundaries with a new name is a new seat.
This is not OR and it is dishonest to claim it is OR.
"it quite clear that reliable sources call this seat a "Green win from Conservative"". this is easily covered in the boundaries section as this is where it should be listed. That is a claim made by the academics. You can have news media outlets use the notional but that does not make it the actual accurate election results. it is just an academic calculation of the boundaries likely to have returned based on the new boundaries at a previous election. It is not an actual election in any way shape or form.

Finally, the change in the number of seats has nothing to do with the actual election results when the boundaries are all changed, please. News media are desperate to give numbers to make their lives easier, but that does not mean that they are basing the numbers they are giving as accurate reflections of an actual election that took place previously.

Finally the personal aside about hospitals is not relevant as it is attempting to attack me through the use of 'woe is me I give in". Please refrain from that kind of tactic as it is manipulative. LawNerd123 (talk) 01:02, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
You must realise that your approach is simply ‘I don’t trust these academics and the rest of the world be damned’.
That is not productive. Notional results are an integral part of the reporting of UK election results. It is unfortunate that you don’t agree with that, but that’s just how it is.
I am relatively ambivalent about whether a seat is reported as a gain/hold or new seat (though gain/hold is the accurate way to report it) but voteshare changes are integral. Icc27 (talk) 06:41, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
No it’s not, and your claims and conclusion-jumping are nonsense.
The claims you make are simply a personal attack trying to cast aspersions.
This boils down to claiming notional results and actual elections are the same they are not. LawNerd123 (talk) 15:49, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
I made no personal attack against you (rather rich from someone who has just attacked another user for having the temerity to get ill) but I apologise if you took it that way.
What I did was make a simple statement of fact. Your argument against including the notional results boils down to the fact that you personally don’t like them. I personally do like them and find them useful, so let’s call that 1-1.
However this site is not a personal plaything for either of us, and I (and others) have produced several highly reputable sources who use notionals. Can you produce any reputable sources which do not use notional results? Icc27 (talk) 19:13, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
You are stuck record and going round in belligerent circles
it is clearly not worth trying to discuss things with you considering how toxic you are showing yourself to be
I’ve made clear why your position is absurd yet you keep falling back on it lie a silver bunker actually give some reasons beyond see others using it and u want it in the results
The word compromise seems vacant from your vocabulary and carry on
You will not engage with any of the suggestions I have made and have shown contempt for the administrators notice board directions LawNerd123 (talk) 22:46, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
Jesus, and you just accused me of making personal attacks. Pot calling the kettle black comes to mind.
Sadly there is not a lot of compromise which can be achieved here, given the subject of ‘should changes be in the election box’ is either a yes or a no - though I did concede that I am ambivalent about whether boxes say ‘gain’ or ‘new seat’.
I have asked if you can produce a source to back up your point of view. Can you? I would have to assume not. Icc27 (talk) 22:56, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
OK time to disengage with you you are not a person who is wiling to discuss in good faith. LawNerd123 (talk) 00:24, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Per Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard#Persistent vandalism of UK constituency pages by user LawNerd123 and because this affects hundreds of pages I am placing increased restrictions in this area. No editor is to make more than three reverts in 24 hours across the subject as a whole. Editors must also stop blind reverts and labelling other good faith contributions "vandalism". Timrollpickering (talk) 18:54, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

To everyone arguing the toss to keep in notional results these comments sum up perfectly the problem. National results are a barrier to understanding as no one apart from political hacks and a few academics have any idea what the actual earthly idea a Notional Result is: here --LawNerd123 (talk) 12:55, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@LawNerd123: you've misunderstood my statement. It does not support including or excluding notional results. This should be obvious, because I also had no idea what the opposite of notional results is or at least I didn't before I looked into it a bit. My point was solely that people need to have some idea of what is being asked if they are able to give meaningful feedback on what's proposed and this applies whether you want to include notional results or whatever's the name for whatever you want to include. To give a very simple example, if you were to ask should we include the median wage or the mean wage, plenty of people will not understand this. In such a case, it might be relevant to offer a brief explanation or at least link to something explaining the difference. Most people are more likely to have experience with mean at least as something simplistically called an average which generally means the mean although both median and mean can be considered averages. But this doesn't mean either mean or median is clearly superior. In fact it's probably a little easier for people to understand what a median is when you explain it even if medians come up less often in general. Clearly none of this means we should never include either means or medians. Going by your logic, we shouldn't include either one! Now median vs mean is such a basic part of statistics that some might argue it's not necessary since anyone who doesn't already understand might not be able to offer meaningful feedback and I don't intend this to be a real-world example. Instead I simply used it to explain why the fact that some explanation is needed doesn't mean either is superior since you need an explanation for both of them. My whole point was plenty of people have no idea what is being asked at all, not that notionals is something inherently hard to understand. This is because you're getting into a fairly technical area of different ways elections results may be presented and probably the majority of people don't know such specifics. Even if they have experience with them, they probably have no idea what they are called. I still don't know what the sort of results you want to present are called. But whatever you call what you preferred option is, I'm guessing the vast majority of people will have no idea what this is either; and no idea what makes it different from notional. Like with the median vs mean example, the logical conclusion of this based on your reasoning is actually we shouldn't include either notionals or whatever you want to include meaning we have no results which is fairly obviously not what we want to do. Nil Einne (talk) 20:48, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

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