Template talk:Dutch general elections

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Please note that the elections template series is limited to:

Presidential elections Senate/upper house elections Parliament/lower house elections National referenda

There is a seperate template for EU elections and local/regional elections should also have their own template, otherwise the boxes will become oversized.

Thanks Number 57 09:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I have five arguments to revert the back to version I have created

1. The criteria for inclusion are sloppy why include referenda but exclude European elections: as the sole national referendum concerned the European Union and as there were only six European elections, I think that we might as well include them here. There is no good reason to include national referenda over European parliament elections.
2. European Union election are more similar to referenda: these elections share the same characteristics as the national elections, same district(s), same parties etc. European elections are also included in the Elections in the Netherlands.
3. The current division between European and national elections makes easy navigating (the goal of navigating templates) between EU and national elections impossible: it implies that EU elections have nothing to do with national politics.
4. The standardization of templates is both undiscussed and not as far reaching as Number 57 claims: Israel has prime ministerial elections, the Belgian one excludes its 1946-referendum, as does the Swedish one and the UK one. The consistency is overrated.
5. Finally I think the edit which reverted my actions was was sloppy: the editor changed this template but did not remove it from the European parliament election pages and by flagging it as a minor edit with summary "Oops" is not a good edit summary for such a change. I have reverted the edit.

I hope these points will be answered. C mon 10:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

OK,

1. Regarding European elections, they are not carried out at the national level, but rather (at least in the UK) by regions, with some irregularities, such as Gibraltar being included in the UK for EU elections, but not national elections. They do not affect national politics in the way other national elections or votes do, and in this way are also more similar to local/regional elections. Referenda shape national policy. EU elections shape EU policy.
2. European elections do not necessarily share the same characteristics as national elections. Some countries use different districts (UK again being one). Parties also differ slightly as many anti-EU parties appear during EU elections.
3. European elections do indeed have very little to do with national politics; EU parliament members cannot vote on national matters, only EU matters, and also shown by sharply differing results of EU and national elections
4. The standardisation is a work in progress. I was not aware of the referenda you mention, and they will be added to those templates in the near future
5. I have no idea why the summary came out like that, as I made two edits. The first was a revert, with an edit summary stating why (rv to last edition by NightStallion; EU elections have seperate template), but for some reason, though the template appeared to save, it was unchanged on my screen. Assuming I made a mistake and didn't delete the EU section, I made a second edit with the edit summar Ooops, which I assumed was easily explained by the edit seconds previously which had obviously gone wrong. I saved it a second time. However, when I checked the history, my first edit did not appear for whatever reason, and I couldn't change the edit summary.

Number 57 10:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I think your approach suffers from one problem: you try to standardize cross-nationally, overlooking national diversity: the Dutch EP elections occur at a national level; the Dutch referendum was European in nature and was far more important for the European polity than for the Dutch polity; furthermore provincial elections affect the composition of the Dutch senate and are therefore important on the national level; the Dutch have parties in the senate that are not in the lower house and vice versa like party systems differ at the EU level. The Dutch are different in this, like the Belgians are different in other things: their regional governments are so important that I would include them in their national template. Although I endorse standarization in principle, it should be able to reflect national differences. So I don't think standardization is a good plan in this case. C mon 23:11, 2 January 2007 (UTC)