Talk:List of members of the Swiss Federal Council

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[edit] Form of link to successor/predecessor on biographies

Predecessor:
Ruth Metzler-Arnold		 one of seven members of the Swiss Federal Council
(2004-)		 Successor:
- (in office)

Following the point raised by Adam Carr about the "Predecessor" link here and by Jiang about the one at Joseph Deiss, I added a sample version of the those ugly boxes. Before we add them to all 100 members, we might want to be sure, that that's the way we want them to be. -- User:Docu

Preceded by:
Ruth Metzler-Arnold		 Federal councillors of Switzerland

I have copied the layout they use for the Presidents of the United States as a suggestion. I have also done it for Ruth Metzler-Arnold, so we see how it looks for someone who is already out of office. What do you think? I might write a bot to do this. But I remember having seen some guidelines on when and how to do this, so I'll check the guidelines first. -- Patrice Neff 13:35, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Preceded by
Arnold Koller		 Federal councillors of Switzerland Succeeded by
Christoph Blocher

For easier comparison, I inserted some of the samples above, further a more compact version of the one used on Ruth Metzler. BTW Eamon_de_Valera has a lot of them .. for another sample: Ásgeir Ásgeirsson.

The difference with most of them is that there are part of seven-member council, not just the sole incumbent of an office. "member of the Swiss Federal Council" might express this better. I'd add the years in office as well. If there is a way to do it by bot, all the better. -- User:Docu

Preceded by
Arnold Koller		 member of the Swiss Federal Council
1999-2003		 Succeeded by
Christoph Blocher

I added to above to Ruth Metzler. I'd use this version. -- User:Docu

I like your suggestion. I would only change the capitalization. -- Patrice Neff

Preceded by
Arnold Koller		 Member of the Swiss Federal Council
1999-2003		 Succeeded by
Christoph Blocher

Good idea. Shall we add it by hand or will you be able to do it by bot? -- User:Docu

Seems that a bot is okay, if I run is slow enough. So I might try writing a bot based on pywikipediabot. I'll keep you informed. Patrice Neff 00:46, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Ok. For now I added the box the ones still in office by hand. BTW check Wikipedia:Bot -- User:Docu
I suppose I will have to do it by hand .. User:Docu
The first one is done, I also improved the terminology for the presidency. -- User:Docu

[edit] Chronological list as well ?

Shouldn't we also provide a chronological list of Federal Councillors, instead of just referring to an external link ? The French Wikipedia, for example, provides both the list and the table on the same page, and it looks good to me, especially since the chronological table is quite detailed. Schutz 08:22, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I have no objection. We should also use the French layout while we're at it, it's much prettier. Sandstein 08:59, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree; in particular, our "tables" of statistics/trivia look awful. I'll give it a shot tonight if I have some time. Schutz 09:27, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. They used to look better. -- User:Docu

I have started a draft of such a table at Talk:List of members of the Swiss Federal Council/newtable. My model is List of Presidents of the United States (with different background colours according to the different parties, although it is not obvious yet...). Compared to the list on fr, I have not included the place of origin and date of birth/death, since I did not want to add too much clutter (and this data is not directly relevant to the topic of the list); however, I am of course open to discussion about which pieces of information should be added or removed from the table — obviously, I'd rather discuss this now than when the 109 councillors have been added to the list... Schutz 13:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Nice work the new table. I don't mind the addition of a second version. -- User:Docu
I think it looks great, too. The departments they headed would also be of interest, but then the table would probably get too broad. Maybe remove the date of election instead? Sandstein 19:36, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Probably a good idea, but we will have to use the abbreviations for all the departments. I was also thinking that maybe a list of years when each concillor has been president may be an idea. Schutz 17:45, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Sure, we need abbreviations for the departments - I suggest the German ones, with the full texts in all three languages plus English in a footnote. I personally wouldn't bother about the presidencies, because except for the first few decades they're just on a seven-year-rotation, and the job isn't really significant anyway. And we already have List of Presidents of the Swiss Confederation. But if they can be elegantly integrated into the table, I won't object. Sandstein 18:36, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone give it a shot, starting e.g. with Jonas Furrer, to start establishing the abbreviations, etc ? Schutz 20:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Interestingly, I just discovered that the date of election actually seems to be the important date; if you look at the official list, e.g. [1] or [2], you'll notice that the date when a councillor took office is not recorded; only the election date is. So we should probably remove the "starting" date instead (although even if we don't have official sources, we can deduce the start date from the date of retirement of the previous councellor). Schutz 22:19, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

What about the order ? I think we should probably reverse the list: someone looking at this page is more likely to be interested in Doris Leuthard than Jonas Furrer... Schutz 17:45, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd keep it in chronological order, because that's what people are used to - I've sampled ten random entries in Lists of office-holders, and all were in chronological order. Sandstein 18:36, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Ok. Schutz 20:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

To continue the new table, I have to make sure that we have pictures for all the Federal Councillors. For the recent ones, we have some free pictures (although they may not be good enough to illustrate the article, e.g. we need a portrait, and a photo of a councillor lost in a crowd would probably not help much), so I am looking at Fair Use images. I started with Image:Doris Leuthard.gif; could other people have a look at my fair use rationale and see if it is good enough, before I start uploading other pictures (if needed) ? Thanks, Schutz 20:05, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


Talk:List of members of the Swiss Federal Council/newtable is quite complete. Shall we move it to List of members of the Swiss Federal Council by date of election ? BTW "style="background:#dddddd" renders a bit dark on my screen. Maybe we'd want to use a lighter shade of gray. -- User:Docu

The main thing that should probably be done before we make this table "public" would be to clean up the list of departments at the bottom. Otherwise, I am all for it. But I am wondering on which page it should go. On fr:, both tables (the chronological list and the detailed table) are on the same page; would it be too long ? More generally, my aim is to get List of members of the Swiss Federal Council become a featured list in the near future, and I was wondering which information we should put in there to achieve this goal. Schutz 08:24, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Maybe a solution for the departments would be to use abbreviations such as Justice, Military, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Interior, possibly "Trade/Economy", "Posts/Transports". From those heading the Political_Department#List_of_ministers prior to Hoffmann, I'd only list it as department of Droz and Lachenal and add a footnote to the others who headed it as President of the Confederation.
Featured lists tend to be a bit overloaded with images, references and introductions, but I suppose the new table could become one on its own. -- User:Docu

[edit] Succession boxes for Presidents of the Confederation

Shall we have succession boxes for the President of the Confederation similar to those we already have for the members?

User:Booksworm added them to Moritz Leuenberger. In addition, there is now a {{Infobox President}} as the one on George W. Bush.

Personally, I'd limit the boxes to the succession box with Otto Stich (as member of the Federal Council) as well {{Members of the Swiss Federal Council}} with all current members. -- User:Docu

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