Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies

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Contents 1 Archives 2 Name changes 3 Future constituencies (again) 3.1 New articles 4 1950 election results 5 Proposed merger 6 Template when more than one member elected 7 Infobox for places returning members to the unreformed House 8 Alliance for Change (UK) 8.1 British Peoples Party (2005) 9 Future Constituencies....continued 10 FYI 11 Social and Liberal Democrats 12 Number of representatives per constituency 13 National Front Metadata 14 Richmond, North Yorkshire 15 Article Moves - advice sought 16 Website out? 17 Election Box Metadata 18 Constituencies in Ireland 19 Constituencies in the next UK general election 20 Plaid Cymru 21 Orpington (UK Parliament constituency) election results 22 South/North 23 Linking 24 Historic constituencies: Supercat/subcat duplication 25 vector maps 26 {{UK-constituency-stub}} split 27 Getting into focus... 28 Problems with listing borough divisions and county compass-point name order 29 Moving On With Official Names for Constituencies 30 Turnout Box 31 Article names, guidelines needed? 31.1 Summary of the issue 31.2 Straw poll 31.3 Following the Straw Poll 32 Historic constituency names 33 South Molton discrepancies 34 Conservative or Unionist party tags in Scotland 35 Project directory 36 St George's Hanover Square 37 West Yorkshire 1865-1885 38 University seat names 39 (Royal) Tunbridge Wells 40 Three CFDs 41 Six good reasons 41.1 Case for split seems to be proven 41.2 Connected to this decision... 42 Stablepedia 43 Geographical data

[edit] Archives

Parts of this talk page have been archived:

• /Archive_1 - Created 29 September 2005
• /Archive_2 - Created 2 November 2006

[edit] Name changes

Looking at Harrogate (constituency) and Harrogate and Knaresborough (UK Parliament constituency) 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. JeremyA 22:06, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

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! doktorb | words 22:51, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Future constituencies (again)

Could we agree on a standard style for future constituencies? I propose what I've just done to the Garston and Halewood 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!--RFBailey 18:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I created Constituencies in United Kingdom General Election, 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.

doktorb | words 19:48, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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. Constituencies in United Kingdom General Election has been updated upto the 11 Jan report from the English Boundary Commission. doktorb | words 12:55, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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 Brighton Kemptown result for that year and then that constituency will have complete results. --New Progressive 16:31, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed merger

Please see Talk:St Helens South (UK Parliament constituency). --RFBailey 22:14, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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? Jooler 23:18, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Good god , did I really write color - bloody Microsoft. Jooler

Indeed some constituencies (e.g. Brighton) 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. New Progressive 01:32, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

General Election, 13 July 1865: Lewes
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Liberal	Henry B. W. Brand	325
	Liberal	Lord Pelham	324
	Conservative	William Langham Christie	292
	?	Sir Alfred F. A. Slade Bt.	232
Majority
Turnout			Electorate = ???
	Liberal hold		Swing
	Liberal hold		Swing

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. Timrollpickering 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). Warofdreams talk 11:09, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

2002 General Election: Dublin Central
Candidate		Party	1st Pref	%	Seat	Count
	Bertie Ahern	Fianna Fáil	10,896	31.97	1	1
	Tony Gregory	Independent	5,675	16.65	2	4
	Joe Costello	Labour	4,149	12.17	3	7
	Dermot Fitzpatrick	Fianna Fáil	2,592	7.61	4	7
	Nicky Kehoe	Sinn Féin	4,979	14.61
	Jim Mitchell	Fine Gael	3,798	11.06
	Tommy Simpson	Green	1,470	4.31
	Paul O'Loughlin	Christian Solidarity	366	1.07
	Tom Prendeville	Independent	97	0.28
	Patrick O'Donnell	Independent	89	0.26

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

Preston City Council Elections: Ingol ward 2003
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Liberal Democrats	Peter Pringle	594
	Liberal Democrats	William Shannon	501
	Conservative	Kathryn Calder	432
	Conservative	Susan Hudson	430
	Labour	Alan Foster	336
	Labour	Ian Walton	292
Majority			162 & 71
Turnout			2,590 [votes]	46

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? Jooler 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. Warofdreams talk 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. --Gary J 02:16, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox for places returning members to the unreformed House

{{{Name}}}

[[{{{Type}}}]]
Location of {{{Name}}}]]
Members:	{{{Members}}}
Dates:	{{{Year}}}
Type:	House of Commons
County:	{{{County}}}]]
Franchise:	{{{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? David | Talk 22:50, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

It might also be interesting to have an optional parameter, {{{patron}}}, to indicate the "owner" of various pocket boroughs. Of course, that would vary over time; probably not practical to implement. Looks fine to me. Mackensen (talk) 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. -Neo 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. --Gary J 02:40, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alliance for Change (UK)

For reference, I have created an election box template for the Alliance for Change (UK) 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 [Independent - Best choice for change, Liberal Democrat - Focus Team. that sort of thing]

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

Yes, they stood in three seats in the 2005 general election - I've now linked them. Warofdreams talk 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? doktorb | words 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. Warofdreams talk 13:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

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

[edit] British Peoples Party (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? doktorb | words 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 British Democratic Party. --New Progressive 17:35, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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 Constituencies in the next United Kingdom general election 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?!

doktorb | words 20:01, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FYI

A few weeks ago I began collating the results of the constituency of Lewes 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 The Times 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. Jooler 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 F. W. S. Craig's books. Press reports are often inaccurate. David | Talk 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. --Gary J 02:54, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Social and Liberal Democrats

I've created metadata for the Social and Liberal Democrats, 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. --RFBailey 21:57, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Number of representatives per constituency

It really ought to be made clear somewhere obvious (perhaps (United Kingdom constituencies or List of former United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies) 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. TheGrappler 22:22, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

I have done a list of MPs elected in the British general election, 1754, 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 Multi member constituencies in the British Parliament) 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 City of London (UK Parliament constituency) for a four seat constituency, reduced to two seats in 1885. Becausae it was getting too long I split the article and produced City of London (elections to the Parliament of England), which gives some historical information about how the City ran its elections in Tudor times. I hope that helps. --Gary J 03:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] National Front Metadata

There appears to be metadata for both National Front (UK) ([1] & [2]) and British National Front ([3] & [4]).

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

[edit] Richmond, North Yorkshire

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? — sjorford (talk) 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. doktorb | words 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. --Gary J 03:32, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article Moves - advice sought

User:Steinsky 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?

doktorb | words 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. Laurel Bush 17:40, 21 April 2006 (UTC).

Wolverhampton South East and Wolverhampton South West are such examples; Bristol West is another (User:Steinsky and User:Doktorbuk 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 Billy Connolly (Scottish comedian, actor and television presenter) being used instead of Billy Connolly, 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 here. I've read it and it doesn't suggest any sort of consensus was reached. --RFBailey 18:17, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

It appears all the Birmingham seats. Filton and Bradley Stoke) and York Outer spring to mind too. doktorb | words 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. Mrsteviec 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. Warofdreams talk 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 Mid Dorset and North Poole 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 Sedgefield?). So for these disambiguation is still required.

How do these sound as a solution? Timrollpickering 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):

1. 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.
2. 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 Dudley North (UK Parliament constituency) and a person called Dudley North, so if pre-emptive disambiguation is usefull here, why isn't it useful for people? Joe D (t) 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. Joe D (t) 02:24, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

There was another later discussion, 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 here, if it's to anyone's interest. — sjorford (talk) 13:46, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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. (Jammydodger 19:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC))

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

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

[edit] Election Box Metadata

The Template:Election box metadata used to work simply by posting {{Election box metadata}} on the relevant party's article talk page. I have tried with One London and it doesn't seem to be working at all. Is this a problem with my account or a technical issue?

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

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

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

[edit] Constituencies in Ireland

There's a current discussion on naming at Category talk:Parliamentary constituencies in the Republic of Ireland 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. Warofdreams talk 17:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Constituencies in the next UK general election

User:Laurel Bush has added, and after mild unease I am supporting, a new column to the table of Constituencies in the next United Kingdom general election. 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, doktorb | words 09:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Plaid Cymru

According to the Plaid and National Assembly articles, Plaid has changed its party colour to yellow, which I have been bold 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 ? doktorb | words 15:53, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

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

[edit] Orpington (UK Parliament constituency) 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. JJE 19:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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. Rob.derosa 05:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

DO NOT CONTINUE DOING THIS! You cannot do Cut and paste moves. Ryūlóng 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. doktorb _words^deeds 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." ;) Joe D (t) 22:04, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Linking

Please keep in mind that the House of Commons 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 British House of Commons, or by piping to that article thusly: [[British House of Commons|House of Commons]]. I thank you, and readers will thank you for providing a correct link. Ground Zero | t 15:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Historic constituencies: Supercat/subcat duplication

There is a general debate in Wikipedia, with no consensus, about when it is appropriate to list an article in both a category and one of its subcategories. In my opinion Category:United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies (historic) does not need to include all the articles in Category:Historic parliamentary constituencies in England, Category:Historic parliamentary constituencies in Scotland (Westminster), etc. Having recently added Category:Historic Westminster constituencies in Ireland, 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 Category talk:United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies (historic)#Split up agrees with me. jnestorius^(talk) 18:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] vector maps

Now that TheyWorkForYou has released its API, I'm working on creating vector maps for every constituency (see [5]). 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 South Ribble (compare Image:SouthRibbleConstituency.png with No. 14 on the reference). — Wereon 16:19, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Just looked at an outline map, and it seems that Wikipedia rather than the Boundary Commission is right on this one. — 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. doktorb _words^deeds 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. — Wereon 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? Laurel Bush 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 this web site a go, you may find it relevant to your query doktorb _words^deeds 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. Jammydodger 18:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{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 WP:WSS/P. Alai 20:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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. doktorb _words^deeds 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 Wikipedia, 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 King's County (UK Parliament constituency). --Gary J 00:11, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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). --Gary J 00:52, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

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

• Thanks for the guidance. I will look at the guidelines and see if I think they need changing. --Gary J 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). Laurel Bush 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? --Gary J 02:52, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Will give comments later, but the previous decisions are at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_Parliament_constituencies/Archive_1#Progress page and continued at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_Parliament_constituencies/Archive_1#Location Disambiguator or Disambiguator Location?. Warofdreams talk 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. doktorb _words^deeds 08:45, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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. --Gary J 15:22, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I have started Official names of United Kingdom Parliamentary Constituencies 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. --Gary J 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. Morwen - Talk 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. --Gary J 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. doktorb _words^deeds 09:16, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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.

--Gary J 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. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 19:18, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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:

1. Don't do a redirect bypass on links of the form [[Borsetshire South-West (UK Parliament constituency)]], 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.
2. 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)
3. 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 Aberdeen South (UK Parliament constituency) and Aberdeen South (Scottish Parliament constituency). (If you're thinking on suggesting that one or other of them should use the undisambiguated title, well ... don't go there).

--BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 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. doktorb _words^deeds 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. Laurel Bush 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. Joe D (t) 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 20,000–30,0000 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 Primary Care Trusts 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 Holland with Boston (UK Parliament constituency)). So, for example Sheffield Heeley should really be a dab page which offers a choice of:

• The Heeley district of the city of Sheffield, in South Yorkshire
• Sheffield Heeley (UK Parliament constituency), a constituency in the Heely district

--BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 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. doktorb _words^deeds 12:21, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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 Wikipedia 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. Joe D (t) 13:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

In reply to Steinsky/Joe D:

1. 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 Wikipedia is for.

1. • 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.

1. • 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 Wikipedia:Hatnotes 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".

1. • 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 North Devon, 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 Wikipedia. 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 Dudley North even clashes with a constituency, so I really think we must go around appending "(person)" to all biographies, after all, why confuse people?

1. 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.

1. People, films, etc do not use names directly derived from another entity on which wikipedia will almost certainly have an article, and do not use names which are likely to be an exact copy of a geographical area. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 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? Joe D (t) 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 "[[XYZ (UK Parliament constituency)|XYZ]]" and be confident that, even if the article isn't there at the moment, it will be when someone writes it. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 19:12, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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:
  1. There are a high number of clashes, e.g. with geographical areas, train stations, etc.
  2. The name of the consituency can be ambiguous with informal geographical areas, even if they do not and will not have another Wikipedia article of the same name.
  3. 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:
  1. 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 Wikipedia.
  2. and 3. This misses the point of Wikipedia:Disambiguation, 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 Wikipedia article, because they simply get redirected to the constituency page.
• Additionally, background on the origin of the situation may be useful, including Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_Parliament_constituencies/Archive_1#Constituency_names_redux this archive discussion. 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)'".
• Joe D (t) 11:28, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

In addition to the above, other admins may wish to watch BrownHairedGirl (talk • contribs), 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. Joe D (t) 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? Joe D (t) 13:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Finally, your suggestion that I have not responded to your "rebuttals" is bizarre, and stetches my ability to WP:AGF. Please read the discussion above for a series of lengthy responses. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 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. Joe D (t) 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)". --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 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. Joe D (t) 12:28, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

For my part (as someone who uses Wikipedia to find things out), I find the form WITH (UK parliament constituency) very useful, as it clearly differentiates between constituencies and vaguer geographical descriptions. DuncanHill 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. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 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. Joe D (t) 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. Galloglass 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 Wikipedia. Perhaps just over half of constituencies clash. Joe D (t) 13:32, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I have to say I agree with Galloglass on this - it makes sense to have a consistent approach to naming articles about constituencies, and if as Steinsky/Joe D says over half of constituencies clash, then standardising on a non-clashing form would be the simplest way to do this. DuncanHill 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. Joe D (t) 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. DuncanHill 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'. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 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. Joe D (t) 14:02, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

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

Not that I can see! --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 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 1990 statutory instrument splitting the Milton Keynes constituency, 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:

1. 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.
2. Joe/Steinsky seems to reagrd the overriding criterion for an Wikipedia 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
3. 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 wikipedia 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! --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 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. doktorb _words^deeds 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 East Surrey 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). Timrollpickering 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: West Devon, 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 West Devon page used as you describe. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 16:32, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl 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. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 16:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 15:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Include "(UK Parliament constituency)" on all constituency articles

• Support BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 15:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support doktorb _words^deeds 15:43, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support Timrollpickering 15:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support Galloglass 15:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 16:05, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support Warofdreams talk 02:13, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support DuncanHill 08:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support Alisdair37 00:43, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support Laurel Bush 09:38, 14 October 2006 (UTC).
• Support Mrsteviec 07:42, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support Mr Stephen 11:37, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Use shortest unique name

Other option

Use disambiguation only when neccessary.

• Support -- Joolz 16:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Undecided/don't care

[edit] 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" Wentworth and Dearne from its unnessesary redirect too.

doktorb _words^deeds 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:

• Cat:Parliamentary constituencies in the East Midlands
• Cat:Parliamentary constituencies in the East of England
• Cat:Parliamentary constituencies in the North East
• Cat:Parliamentary constituencies in the North West
• Cat:Parliamentary constituencies in the South West
• Cat:Parliamentary constituencies in Wales
• Cat:Parliamentary constituencies in Yorkshire and the Humber

Still to be done:

• Cat:Parliamentary constituencies in London done before 2006-11-09
• Cat:Parliamentary constituencies in the South East done 2006-11-09
• Cat:Parliamentary constituencies in the West Midlands 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 Wentworth and Dearne, I tok a quick look but I'm not sure what should be done. What did you have in mind? -BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 15:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Cheers BHG - good work on all this. If we have "allowed" Salford and Eccles to be separate from Salford and Eccles, 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? doktorb _words^deeds 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: Wentworth and Dearne is currently a redirect, which means that it is simply an article containing only the following content: #REDIRECT [[Wentworth (UK Parliament constituency)]].

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 edit the page and replace the redirect with a substantive article. Hope this helps! --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 10:44, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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. --Gary J 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. doktorb _words^deeds 07:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I just came back here after noticing the redirected discussion at Talk:List of former United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies. 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? <grin>

• 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 Cat: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):

1. Compass points:

   either

   1. (my preference) place compass points after geogaphical name in all cases (e.g. Borsetshire South West)
      or
   2. 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 Milton Keynes South West and North East Milton Keynes, which are really confusing for the reader: see for example the list at MPs elected in 1997); 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

1. City and Borough prefixes: do we say "Lambeth Norwood" or just "Norwood"?

   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:

   1. 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

   2. Never use the city/borough prefix

      Probably the worst option, to my mind, because the contemporary city constituencies (e.g. Birmingham Selly Oak 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 Ealing Acton and Lewisham Deptford.

   3. Use a roughly historical system: so before 1974, we have Deptford, and after 1974 we have Lewisham Deptford

      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.

2. The comma with city or borough prefixes (Birmingham Selly Oak or Birmingham, Selly Oak):

   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 Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley.

What do others think? --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 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) Surrey Mid, 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? Warofdreams talk 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 — 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 Metropolitan Borough of Deptford 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 1885 MP 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. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 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. Timrollpickering 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 [his own website says "I am MARTYN JONES, Member of Parliament for CLWYD SOUTH". I can' think of any rule for what sounds right :( --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 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. Warofdreams talk 02:00, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Warofdreams, I'm sorry for taking so long to reply. Ater thinking about your last reply, I had decided that you and others were probably right about the county prefix, but wanted to think about it a little more, and got sidetracked :(

Anyway, the only downside I can think of is that if we wanted to use the infoboxes for automatic categorisation (and I think it's an idea with potential), it would be impeded by the prefix. But then I hought a little more and realised that we could just allow an index key in the infobox template, and that wouldd solve the problem if we ever get that adventurous.

I have also looked again at the Deptford/Lewisham Deptford constits, and I suspect that I was probably wrong to split: the current boundaries as described look remarkably similar to the boundaries of the borough (as shown on the outline map at Metropolitan Borough of Deptford), which extended much further south than I had imagined. So I doubt that there has been much drift in the constituency boundaries, and I think that a merge is in order. (I think we need to draw up gyidelines on when to merge or split, just to record current coinsensus, if there is one, and I think there is, more or less).

Thanks for the info on the usage of the MK names. It stills seems to me to be very ugly to have a prefix for one but not the other, but if this official anomaly is widely recognised, I can see the case for following the official line.

I'll draw up a revised set of proposals based on where we've got to so far: I think we have covered most of the issues, but no doubt a few more will crop up once we look at a collated list! --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 23:33, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] South Molton discrepancies

Can anyone help with a definitive answer to the question of when the South Molton constituency was abolished? See the constituency's talk page 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!--BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 10:40, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to Warofdreams for clarifying this one promptly. Now sorted. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 15:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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 Galloglass 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? Laurel Bush 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 Winchester in 1997 there was (famously) a candidate with the label "Liberal Democrat Top Choice for Parliament" and another (the official party nominee Mark Oaten) 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 Northern Ireland Labour Party 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 - John Barnes 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!)

Timrollpickering 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? Laurel Bush 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. Galloglass 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. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 09:20, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

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

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. 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 User:B2T2/Portal, 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 assessment, peer review, and collaboration 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. B2T2 17:32, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] St George's Hanover Square

We now have two articles on the same constituency: St George's Hanover Square (UK Parliament constituency) and Westminster St George's (UK Parliament constituency).

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? --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 00:18, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

According to Craig St George's Hanover Square (UK Parliament constituency) changed its name in 1918 to Westminster St George's (UK Parliament constituency). Hope this helps. Galloglass 01:02, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The Westminster St George's (UK Parliament constituency) 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. Galloglass 01:08, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, Westminster St George's (UK Parliament constituency) 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 The Wrekin (UK Parliament constituency)'s 1997 change), and as you say it's clearer anyway. I'll merge the two now. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 16:37, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

merge completed. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 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. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 14:01, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I know there were boundary changes Fys 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 Westminster St George's (UK Parliament constituency) which I think suggests a good degree on continuity at the time between them. Galloglass 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 Newcastle upon Tyne North (UK Parliament constituency), 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. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 17:34, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Local associations sometimes have different names to the seat - from recollection the Conservative constituency association in Reigate 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. Timrollpickering 18:16, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I do see your point Fys 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. Galloglass 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. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 17:59, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Fys I see that you have gone ahead and split them. Would it not have been better to wait for input into the discussion from BrownHairedGirl 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 :) Galloglass 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 Metropolitan Borough of Westminster 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, following 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 the 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. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 23:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't revert the split. I was being bold 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 St George, Hanover Square. 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). Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 23:36, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Fys, please read the rest of WP:BOLD, in particular WP:BOLD#.E2.80.A6but_don.27t_be_reckless.21 which advises against proceeding without discussion when an issue is controversial. Please don't short-circuit this attempt to reach consensus. You may know more about this I do, but I and other editors can only go on what you say, which so far has persuaded no-one else in this discussion; please continue the discussion and try to reach agreement rather than simply saying what appears to amount to "I am right, end of discusson". --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 23:48, 5 November 2006 (UTC) [typos corrected later]

There is no further discussion possible: I have provided the conclusive, final, ultimate, clinching, and decisive evidence and argument. There is no case for regarding two constituencies which are quite different in name and composition as one merely because of a superficial similarity in name. Hamlet of Knightsbridge was a particularly important area to add: it had a higher population density than neighbouring Belgravia. It had always been administered as an extraparochial part of Westminster while St George, Hanover Square Parish was part of the 'Liberty of Westminster' and was administered separately. St George Vestry was a defiantly independent institution as David Owen's book "The Government of Victorian London" showed on page 162: it refused to levy the MBW's rates, for example. The St John and St Margaret's vestries of Westminster (it was St Margaret, the most pacific of them, that administered the Hamlet of Knightsbridge). There is in truth no reason to regard the change in 1918 as minimal. There wasn't even a succession of Members. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 00:06, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Fys, further debate is always advisable and possible. I have to say that the evidence you've put forward so far is far from compelling. That said if you can provide some more detail, then that might help convince us. Galloglass 00:17, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Fys, whether your info is, as you claim "conclusive, final, ultimate, clinching, and decisive evidence and argument" is a matter to be decided by seeking consensus in the face of objections. Please stop now, before I start issing vandalism warnings. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 00:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what more information you need. It is absolutely obvious that one constituency called "St. George, Hanover Square" does not have the same name as "Westminster, St. George's". No-one seems to have a problem with the Newcastle North example I cited above which really is conclusive that the linking fact is having the same name, and these two don't. Aston Manor is not included in Birmingham Aston (UK Parliament constituency). Hallamshire (UK Parliament constituency) is not the same as Sheffield Hallam (UK Parliament constituency). I would also dispute the linking of Devonport and Plymouth Devonport. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 00:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Fys, deciding what is the correct form and what is the wrong way is something to involve us all, not just for one person to decide and over-ride the opinions of others. By all means, dispute the rights and wrongs of the argument, but imposing a unilateral solution on the rest of us will always end badly Galloglass 00:37, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Would you demand a debate on whether the earth really is an oblate spheroid before someone reverts your insistence that it's actually flat? Everyone has had all the opportunity to produce a case that the two completely different constituencies are actually the same and no-one has done so. There is no 'debate' going on. I fear what we have is one editor who has developed WP:OWN tendencies and she is behaving irrationally. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 00:43, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Fys, Brownhairedgirl's behaviour has been balanced and considerate throughout. I'd ask you again to leave this topic today and come back to it tomorrow. Galloglass 00:49, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Fys, if you had not been so busy calling us all flat-earthers etc, you might have found a moment to respond more thoughtfully to my reply above at 23:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC). Of course no-one suggest Hallamshire and Sheffield Hallam were the same constituency: that's a logical impossibility, since both were created in 1885.

As to Newcastle North, I would not oppose a split if the teritory didn't even overlap, as I did with The Wrekin (where there was an overlap) and as had already been done with some of the Croydon constituencies where there were radical changes. But from the evidence which you have presented, that's not what we are disccussing here: your evidence appears to show a high degree of commonality between WStg and StHGS.

You say that the WStG and StGHS "one constituency called "St. George, Hanover Square" does not have the same name as "Westminster, St. George's"."" Quite true; no-one is arguing that those names are the same. The point which I and others have made is that one name is a revision of the other: both refer to the same St George's.

You say the two "are quite different in name and composition": again, we disagree on name, but what about composition? What proportion of the territory and/or electorate do you estimate was common to WestG and STgHS?

I really do hope that we can reach agreement. Fys, you obviously do know a lot about constituencies in this area; I am not disputing your evidence, but I am disputing your interpretation of its significance to the article name. I can't speak for anyone else, but I accept that you may be right: it's just that so far your have come nowhere near persuading me that you are. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 10:59, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I have now edited the boundaries section of the reunited article to include the information supplied by Fys about the boundaries 1885-1918 and 1918-1950. I am not sure that I have gotten this right, because the two sets of boundaries appear to be identical, whereas Fys says that they are different. My apologies for any errors, and if anyone has access to the sources, maybe they can make any corrections needed.

Fys is currently blocked until tomorow and has a one week ban on editing the article. However, when Fys's lock is lifted, I suggest that a useful step to resolving this dispute would be for Fys to post here as full a description as possible of the 1885-1918 and 1885-1950 boundaries. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 13:35, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

A useful step to resolving the dispute might have been to unblock me earlier. A useful step to not making the dispute worse might have been to realise that I never broke the 3RR in the first place. A useful step to never having the dispute in the first place might have been to read what I wrote in this edit nearly a month ago. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 14:52, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Fys, I presume that you are referring to the edit summary, where you wrote "should be split". I knew that, but the issue here is that you have not yet persuaded any others that the split is justified. Why not take up the inviation to post here the full details of the constituency boundaries, so that other editors can assess how big the 1918 changes were? --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 15:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] West Yorkshire 1865-1885

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 Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, to address the massive under-representation of industrial West Yorkshire).

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? --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 16:32, 30 October 2006 (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. Galloglass 00:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

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.)". Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 13:58, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Fys! Based on that, I propose "Yorkshire (West Riding) North", "Yorkshire (West Riding) South" etc, with redirects from as many of the other pemutations as we have energy to create. Is that OK with y'all? --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 02:52, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] University seat names

Is there any definitive source for the names? Category:University constituencies in the United Kingdom 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 "Durham University" not "University of Durham").

Craig's 1918-1950 volume (1922 for the Irish universities) uses the following headers:

• Cambridge University
• Combined English Universities
• London University
• Oxford University
• University of Wales
• Combined Scottish Universities
• Queen's University of Belfast

...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.

Since these were historic seats, I think the current university brand should be irrelevant to the article location. But what should we use? Timrollpickering 18:36, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

According to Queen's University of Belfast#History, the Royal University of Ireland was dismantled in 1908, and the former "Queen's College, Belfast" was renamed as the Queen's University of Belfast, 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 Queen's University, Belfast (UK Parliament constituency) should be moved to Queen's University of Belfast (UK Parliament constituency) (which is curently a redirect). --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 12:29, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] (Royal) Tunbridge Wells

Royal Tunbridge Wells (UK Parliament constituency) was a redlink, so have just created it as a redirect to Tunbridge Wells (UK Parliament constituency).

This appears likely to be a straightforward 1983 renaming, so I have noted that in the Tunbridge Wells (UK Parliament constituency) article. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 13:45, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Three CFDs

Three CFDs are curently underway relating to classifying MPs. These may be of interest to those editing constituency articles: see Category talk:British_MPs#Three_CFDs. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 17:09, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Six good reasons

Why St George, Hanover Square should be distinct from Westminster, St George's.

1. Policy is to link constituencies based on their names, not their boundaries. Hence, it does not matter that the constituency named "Newcastle-upon-Tyne, North" which existed after the 1983 election held absolutely no land and no voters that were part of the constituency of the same name which existed before that election. They are reported in the same article. Constituencies like Anglesey/Ynys Môn and Western Isles/Na h-Eileanan an Iar are different: they are where the same name has been rendered in a different language. The two names here are clearly different.
   • As in previous discussions, I disagree that the names are "entirely different": they both refer to the same St George's. The addition of the Westminster prefix relates to the change of local government arrangements, not to changes in the parliamentary constrituency.
     • No, it doesn't. As has been said on WP:AN/I, the names are prima facie different. The burden is therefore on you to prove the identity, not on me to prove difference. Your point about the local government difference is misplaced and actually harms your case - it shows that the St George's division was based on a different concept. The Boundary Commission were largely creating new constituencies based on the new arrangements of local government, which had fundamentally changed since 1885. They did not invariably follow the local government boundaries (see the Boundary Commission Report of 1917, volume III, statement 64, where the Boundary Commission recommend a single Parliamentary Borough covering the Metropolitan Boroughs of Finsbury and Holborn), so they could have recommended a separate St George, Hanover Square division in 1917 if they had wanted to. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 22:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
   • The presumption about always solely following names is not correct. For examples of when articles have been kept together, despite renaming, see, for example: Truro and St Austell, Enfield Southgate, Plymouth Devonport, Maidstone and The Weald. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 19:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
     • I certainly dispute the linking of Devonport with Plymouth Devonport. I doubt any of those have been debated so you can hardly introduce them as precedents. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 22:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
   • For exampes of when articles have been split despite the same name, see for example Croydon South (historic UK Parliament constituency), and Blackburn (the latter is my split between a 2-seat constit pre-1945 and a later single-seater). --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 19:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
     • Ditto. You can't introduce your own opinion as having been accepted as policy merely because no-one has yet noticed. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 22:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
2. There is a clear precedent in Birmingham with Aston Manor. This area was administratively distinct from Birmingham in 1885 when the Aston Manor constituency was created. By 1918 it had been brought in to Birmingham. Hence Birmingham Aston (UK Parliament constituency), created in 1918, does not cover Aston Manor (UK Parliament constituency) (the latter is at the time of writing a redlink).
   • That may be because someone decided they should be split, or because someone creating Brum Aston didn't notice the previous Aston Manor; or did notice but didn't check what if any overlap existed. I don't see any record of a decision on that one, so it may just be interia. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 19:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
     • Someone created Aston Manor the local government district; the idea that this was not noticed given its position as a relatively prominent constituency is difficult to believe. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 22:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
3. Even if the boundary was relevant, which as shown above it is not, then the two constituencies are still different. There were four boundary differences between St George, Hanover Square and Westminster, St George's and they involved thousands of electors: far more than the 5% threshold for minor changes.
   • I really wish you would list those boundary changes, and give us some idea of what you think the percentages are. For me that's the crunch factor in assessing whether the tweak of name and the other factors add up to enough to justify a split. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 19:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
     • I've shown you where the map is. But why should I go out of my way on an irrelevant issue? Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 22:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
4. There was no continuity in Members of Parliament between the two constituencies.
   • I would hate to see continuity of MP being chosen as a factor in assessing whether a constituency had continuity, other than as factor in pointing to possible boundary changes. Even if their own constituency is barely touched, MPs can jump all round town doing boundary changes, or in some cases they go elsewhere or just retire.
     • It's relevant in the sense of showing that there was no automatic assumption that the MP for St George, Hanover Square would get the nomination for Westminster, St George's. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 22:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
5. At the time of its creation as a separate constituency, St George, Hanover Square was administratively entirely different from Westminster (under the Metropolis Local Management Act 1855). Westminster's two vestries, St Margaret and St John, were merged to one district board. St George, Hanover Square vestry was separate. Moreover, it had quite a different approach to politics and was intensely parochial (in fact to an absurd level, although that is another story). By 1918, local government in London had been reformed and the City of Westminster had been created.
   • I'm sure that you are right about the change in local govt structures, but I don't necessarily mean that we need to separate the two parliamentary constituencies. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 19:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
     • It points to the fact that the two constituencies were built up on an entirely different basis. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 22:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
6. St George, Hanover Square was a single undivided Parliamentary borough. St George's was one of two divisions of the divided Parliamentary borough of Westminster. Although at present this is a purely nominal difference, from 1885 to 1918 it was not: it had a legal significance. Business voters could only vote once in the each Parliamentary Borough, regardless of division. In addition, voters qualifying under the residential franchise had to have a period of continuous residence in the Parliamentary Borough, but not necessarily in the division.
   • Now that is a factor to consider. I wasn't aware of that. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 19:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
     • Think on. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 22:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Each of these reasons is quite unarguably true. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 16:17, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, here's another example which I can't quite remember the details for: it's to do with Scarborough. At one point either Scarborough changed to being Scarborough and Whitby, or vice versa, with no change in boundaries at all. Likewise, and here I'm slightly more confident of my memory, South West Staffordshire in 1983 became South Staffordshire without changing its boundaries. Each of those are in different separate articles. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 16:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I have tried to stay well clear from this disucssion for fear of being consumed in all this text for an area I know nothing about...however, I agree that in the Western Isles, and Anglesey cases, it is policy (and quite correct), to have separate articles; just as it is policy (and quite correct) to have separate articles for, to give an example, Worsley, and Worsely and Eccles South, even with the minimal boundary changes therin contained. If you are absolutely confident that you are right, and if BrownHairedGirl agrees to take a fresh look at this given the points you have made, I trust this unforunate episode can be solved without any further "bad blood" doktorb _words^deeds 16:41, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I think, given that a name change coincided with a large change in area covered, as is outlined, there is no reason not to split. I think, however, any policy which bases this only on names would be misguided: this implies we will have separate articles about Blaby (UK Parliament constituency) and South Leicestershire (UK Parliament constituency). In the field of historic local government districts, although I've not actually written anything saying this, I have tried to ignore renamings, and look at continuity of area: we have for example the same article about the South Mimms Rural District and the Potters Bar Urban District, as this was a simple renaming. I appreciate, though, that making an analysis as to whether a constituency is a new one by a different name, or a renaming, is at some level a judgement call, so maybe just basing things on names makes things simpler? ? Morwen - Talk 16:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Morwen, I may have missed something, but I don't think that we yet have an estimate of how big a change was involved. Craig says 29,080 electors in 1918: do we have any estimate how many of those were new? -BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 19:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Local government is slightly different in that the local authority has the power to change its own name, subject to a supermajority (can't remember if it is two-thirds or three-quarters). It would be silly to have separate articles for the two London Boroughs that decided to incorporate a second locality in their name (Hammersmith and Fulham, Barking and Dagenham) and I would also disapprove where an entirely novel name is adopted (eg when West Derbyshire became the more picturesque 'Derbyshire Dales'). However, one could go too far down this path. Note, incidentally, that the West Derbyshire constituency with some minor boundary changes, becomes Derbyshire Dales in the 2006 review; separate articles again. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 23:48, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks to Fys for coming back to this disccussion. If we talk it through, I'm sure we can find a solution.

I think that Fys has made some points which seem to me to be tangential or not to stand up. I have annotated Fys's comments above, but here's a quick summary of how I asses that info:

• Fys correctly cites prededent for keeping articles under the same name 100% boundary changes; however there are also precedents for a split
• Fys points to an article split when there is a renaming, despite no boundary changes; I have listed several precedents for keeping articles together.
• Fys notes the lack of continity of MP; I'm puzzled by Newton Moore's flight to Islington, but I don't see that it's much relevant to constituency names. Neigbouring MP Walter Long's Strand constituency had been abolished, and as a senior minister did he just have enough clout to move next door to continue enjoying the 90% conservative Westminster electorate, while Moore was exiled to Islington?

For me it comes down to this: we have been inconistent about whether a name change justifies an article split, or whether an article should ever be split if the name isn't changed. We could try to draw hard lines on that one, but I think a rigid policy either way would lead to weirdnesses such as Truro and St Austell being separated from Truro, despite no boundary changes. Maybe we should split them, but we haven't.

I think we have two factors pointing towards a split: the tweak of name, and the change in business voters (which is hard to quantify). I'd back a split if the boundary changes were significant, which is why I would have been asking those with the sources to estimate the proportion of electors moved in or out in between the October 1918 by-election and the 1918. In this case, if it's over 20%, I'd definitely say split; if it's under 5% I'd say keep togetger, and if it's inbetween I'll shut up (which would probably be a great relief to everyone!). --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 19:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Walter Long had been adopted for Westminster, St George's at the end of July, before the vacancy in St George, Hanover Square arose. Sir Newton Moore was offered the nomination for the byelection on condition that he would not press his claim to the St George's division for the general election.

It is also worth noting the chapter on St George's and the Empire Crusade in "Byelections in British Politics". Mine is the first edition of 1973 and the reference is on page 104: "In the period 1885-1910, before the Westminster St George's constituency was formed from St Georges Hanover Square and Westminster ...". Incidentally, a long time ago someone referred to the fact that the unofficial Conservative Association in the constituency was called after "St George, Hanover Square". I wouldn't put too much store by this; one of the ward Conservative Associations was still called that in the 1990s. Lots of Conservative Associations have names different to those of the constituency.

Another thing to consider is the other St George's in the constituency - the one at the top of St George's Square in Pimlico.

Getting electorate statistics is very difficult because of the significant franchise change in 1918, and also because in this period the local government franchise was significantly different. One of the most important differences concerned service voters and as the area of Hamlet of Knightsbridge which was taken from Westminster to Westminster, St George's in 1918 included Knightsbridge barracks (and another boundary change affected Chelsea barracks), getting accurate statistics may be elusive.

If we look at population we may get somewhere. Let us assume that the area around Constitution Hill held no population. In 1901, St George, Hanover Square had a population of 76,734. Westminster St George's also included Hamlet of Knightsbridge Ward (population 7,601); however this was only one part of the changes. The boundary between Belgravia and Chelsea moved to the middle of streets, marking a net loss of an unknown number of voters (probably several hundred). Then, Chelsea Barracks (formerly in Chelsea) was added; this must have been many hundreds if not thousands. The removal of a small amount of the Bayswater Road next to the St George, Hanover Square burial ground also took out a small number of electors. (NB that change in itself shows a difference: this was a detached part of St George, Hanover Square parish which was inevitably included in the constituency based on the parish; it was not included in Westminster, St George's but transferred to Paddington, South). Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 22:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

One more thing - if it is argued that similar concepts of constituency could be linked, then there is at least a case for linking the Foyle constituency since 1983 with the City of Londonderry constituency which existed before 1922: they were both attempts at creating a single-member constituency covering the same city. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 23:52, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that's stretching it, Fys :) I would oppose joining Foyle to City of Londonderry, because apart from the wholy difft name, 1983 saw an increase in the number of seats in Northern Ireland (from 12 to 17, if memory is correct), so the boundaries are likely to have been v difft. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 14:11, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I think every seat should be taken on a case by case basis. If there is a long standing relationship, say for example Cambridge where the current seat is on very different boundaries of those of 700 years ago but there is a clear decent, then the seat 'should' be in one article. The obverse of that is Lancaster and Morecombe where a large element of another seat is combined into the Lancaster seat, making it unwise to continue with the original article on just Lancaster, leading to a split and the creation of a new article. Between the 2 extremes though are several seats that we can discus in future. I don't think however that now is the time to do it as we have just had one long wrangle over one seat and any further discussion would just become a continuation of the same discussion, but with less relevance to the actual merits of the individual case. Galloglass 14:29, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Case for split seems to be proven

Fys, thanks very much for the figures above: I think that they do give us enough to go on.

You're right that it's clouded by the franchise change, though that itself isn't a prima facie reason for a split (because it affected all constituencies), just something which clouds calculations. I'll try to tot them up anyway, acknowledging the fuzziness:

• Knightsbridge Ward; assume 1/3 of population were voters (probably generous), so say 2,500
• Belgravia and Chelsea: would 500 be a reasonable guess?
• Chelsea Barracks: lets be generous and say 1,500
• Hanover sq burial ground: say another 250 (beng generous)
• Hanover sq parish: no estimate, but guess 1,000
• Business voters removed: say 500 (complee guess)
• Total of the above: 6,250. (very rough figues, of course)

Those are of course very rough guesstimates, erring (I think) on the side of generosity. But it amounts to over 20% of the 29,080 electors in the constituency in 1918, so I think you have proven your case, and I would now favour a split. What do others think?

BTW, I hope that much of the details you have posted here can be incorporated in the articles. Thanks to all your detailed sources, we have the makings here of a remarkably complete boundaries section on what I think will be two excellent articles. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 12:35, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

We can draw up any number of our own criteria for judging whether a constituency changed its boundaries and/or was renamed, or whether a new constituency was created. The discussion above seems to have been productive in doing so. For me, the key question is how observers, at the time or since, have seen it. Fys' evidence suggests that they saw this change as the creation of a new constituency, not a renaming and boundary change, so I support the split. Warofdreams talk 21:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

The split seems reasonable. As WarofDreams says, the main factor is how people at the time saw it. And in this case they saw it as a new creation. So I too would support it. Galloglass 01:01, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Connected to this decision...

• What shall we decide about Cotswold (now TheCotswolds (UK Parliament constituency)) and/or Taunton (Taunton Deane (UK Parliament constituency) ? doktorb _words^deeds 11:38, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I would favour keeping The Cotswolds (UK Parliament constituency) as a redirect to Cotswold (UK Parliament constituency), because:

1. the renaming is a technical one (to reflect normal usage and local govt district), rather than a substantive one (e.g. to Mid Gloucestershire or whatever)
2. The boundary charges are reportedly v. minor

After the dissolution of this parliament, Cotswold (UK Parliament constituency) should be moved to The Cotswolds (UK Parliament constituency) and the text amended to say "formerly known as" etc. --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 14:19, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Taunton/Taunton Deane is less straightforward to call. The name change is from town to local govt district, which suggests a conceptual shift, and unless the boundary changes are trivial, it seem appropriate to split them.

As an aside, I don't much like the boundary commission's current approach to naming, which seems to me to be over-pedantic. There has been a Taunton constituency since 1295, and I don't see why the name couldn't endure even with more radical boundary changes; this all seems to be on a par with the creation of endless list-style names, which seem to me to be a form of pedantry which undermines clarity. {end rant!} --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 14:27, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 03:27, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

[edit] Geographical data

I have a file of geographical data on each constituency in Great Britain that I want to merge into the corresponding Wikipedia articles. (Unfortunately it doesn't include Northern Ireland.) However, I want to get people's views on this before I go ahead and request a bot to do a mass update of the 600-odd articles.

The file contains, for each constituency, the following data:

• Latitude and longitude of the centre
• Area in square kilometres
• Latitude and longitude of the northern, eastern, southern and western ends
• The number of parts. (This is how many separate land areas the constituency covers - most are just in one part, but some, such as Orkney and Shetland have a huge number of parts because of all the islands.)

(I've done a few sample checks and the data looks correct.)

I think obviously the latitude and longitude of the centres and the area are the most useful pieces of information. Perhaps the best place for the latitude and longitude would be at the top right such as I've done for Brighton Pavilion. Perhaps the best place for the area would be the UK constituency infobox.

As for whether the latitude and longitude of the northern, eastern, southern and western ends nad the number of parts are actually of value, I'm not sure.

I think a small amount of data cleansing would be required (which I'll just do myself) to match the names of the constituencies with the names in my file. (I don't want to make work for the person that will create the bot). Is someone able to come up with a list of the constituencies' article names to help me match things up properly? If so, it would help a lot - just pasting it onto my Talk page would be fine.

So: any ideas/views/recommendations? --A bit iffy 13:00, 8 December 2006 (UTC)