Talk:Canadian federal election

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[edit] naming of the individual articles

I see an inconsistency in the naming of the individual articles on each election:

Canadian federal election, YYYY
YYYY Canadian election

Has this issue been discussed before anywhere and what the resolution is? I'm suspecting the first format has been "chosen" but the redirects are not consistent either. RedWolf 20:17, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)

one of my pages which followed the YYYY Canadian election format was edited to become Canadian federal election, YYYY. so that is now how I title all pages. I intend to do a write up for each. Pellaken 21:41, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

COUNTRY blah election, YEAR seems to be the convention used for the other wikipedia election articles: Russian legislative election, 2003, U.S. presidential election, 2004, etc.--Jiang 22:48, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)


I much prefer YYYY Canadian election, and have been creating election articles in that space for some time. The other countries are forced to use the less clear format because they have both legislative and presidential elections. YYYY Canadian election is unambiguous, shorter, and more grammatical than Canadian federal election, YYYY. –SimonP 23:17, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)

Are there not mayorial elections? Student council elections? Yacht club elections? Provincial elections? It's important that we keep things standard throughout. How is "Canadian election" unambiguous?--Jiang 23:20, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I would have to agree to leave the "federal" in the title although I suspect most voting Canadians would infer automatically it was the federal election. However, since Wiki is international, leaving "federal" in the title would make it unambiguous. The leader of a political party (who then becomes prime minister of Canada if that party wins a federal election) is chosen by delegates to a party convention and not directly by the general population as is the case with presidents in other countries such as the USA. Thus, Canada only has one (general) election at the national level. My initial question was really to do more with the placement of YYYY. While using the format with YYYY at the end would make it more aligned with the existing type of articles from other countries (as from examples above), it does not fit grammatically within a sentence and would almost always require the alternate text in the link. Perhaps we should link this to the Village Pump and get some additional community input? There's going to be quite of a few of these articles so best to get a consensus now for consistency and avoid any future rework. RedWolf 00:16, Feb 9, 2004 (UTC)

I think the federal is wholly unnecessary. I see as similar to Canadian Minister of Finance, no one would confuse it with the article on the Albertan Minister of Finance just as no one would think 2000 Canadian election would mean the 2000 Nova Scotia election. - SimonP 01:37, Feb 9, 2004 (UTC)~

While "Canadian Minister of Finance" and "Albertan Minister of Finance" are specific titles, "Canadian election" is a description. Although you Canadians may not refer to it as such, an election in Nova Scotia takes place is Canada, and therefore can be described as "Canadian". A Nova Scotian politician is also a Canadian politician.--Jiang 01:50, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Those are not titles the Canadian Minister of Finance's title is simply Minister of Finance [1]. This is true of many other names such as Canadian cabinet or Canadian House of Commons. The title "Canadian federal election, YYYY" is also just as ambiguous as it does not take into account the federal bi-elections that happen in any given year. Also any Google search will show that the "YYYY Canadian election" format gets far more hits:
"2000 Canadian election" - 416
"Canadian federal election, 2000" - 110
"1993 Canadian election" - 265
"Canadian federal election, 2000" - 15
"1984 Canadian election" - 39
"Canadian federal election, 1984" - 3 (all wikipedia)
- SimonP 17:12, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)

It is not "just as ambiguous". It limits the subject to the federal level so people won't be looking for countrywide provincial elections here. Maybe Canadian parliamentary election would be even less ambigous. In the US, we have gubeternorial, U.S. senate, U.S. House, presidential, state legislature, and many more positions up for election on the same day. What's to stop someone for looking for multiple levels and positions for Canada under the title "canadian election"?

As for the format of the title, it doesn't matter which gets more google hits as long as they redirect. I not a supporter of the current format, but I see the need to keep things consistent. To change things here would require us to change it everywhere. We'll be dealing with hundreds of articles. Then, redirects supposedly hurt our google rankings and are not a good thing. I think it's too much of a hassle. --Jiang 19:36, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I do not understand your logic Canada has no "countrywide provincial elections", our system is very different. Are your worried about ambiguity? Because your proposed "Canadian parliamentary elections" would have the exact same province/federal problems since the provincial elections are parliamentary elections as well. Canada only has one nationwide type of election that is for the House of Commons. It is a rare country in that it does only have one type of nationwide election. Unlike for the U.S., Russia or most other countries there is thus no need for any clarification in the title. "The 2000 Canadian election" is only ever used to describe that one election that took place in October 2000. Despite the fact that provincial elections did occur in that year.

I see no reason to force articles on Canada to mimic the U.S. format because poorly informed Americans might be confused. If you can find anyone ever referring to a provincial election as "the Canadian election" then please cite examples.

Some other points:

  • From my count there are only ten articles on Canadian elections, of which two already follow the "YYYY Canadian election" system. Moving only eight is not a problem, and I would certainly be willing to move them, so don't worry about the hassle.
  • It does matter how many Google hits something gets, because that has been developed as the standard method for choosing article titles.
  • If Google hits are not important than incoming links should be and for all the articles the "YYYY Canadian election" format is more often used in wikipedia.
  • As to redirects being problematic, most of the articles were originally at the "YYYY Canadian election" until someone moved them. e.g. [2], most of them have spent more of their life at the "YYYY Canadian election" format.
  • My main dislike of the "Canadian federal election, YYYY" is that it not natural English. I have never found myself typing an article where the "Canadian federal election, YYYY" was a natural turn of phrase, unlike "YYYY Canadian election," which comes up frequently.

Perhaps we should have a vote, but I wouldn't like to as this is quite a minor issue, and I would hope it can be solved through reasoned discourse. What do people other than Jiang and myself think? Does anyone else care what the titles are? - SimonP 21:36, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)~

It's not about moving just the Canadian articles. It's about moving every single election article that exists on wikipedia. Not only are the American articles in this format, but the Taiwanese, Irish, Serbian, Russian, British, Swiss, and more. If we change things here, we change it everywhere for the sake of keeping standards. I share you concerns about the natural format and if you would be willing to move these hundreds of articles and fix their trailing double redirects and redirects, then I will be very happy. I don't think this is something you would want to do though.

Do you also take issue with the United Kingdom general elections and Irish general elections? It's just precedence to add a bit of information into the title for the sake of being informative. People have proposed to move September 11, 2001 attacks to simply September 11, 2001. That hasn't gotten much support. The same applies here. --Jiang 00:45, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No Ireland and the U.K. shouldn't be moved because of the Irish Presidential Elections and the U.K. Local elections, which are all held on a single day. Unlike Canada these countries have other nationwide elections and the titles need disambiguation, Canada is not in the same position.

I would disagree with your September 11th analogy, I would say dropping the word "federal" is just like dropping the word "terrorist", shorter more commonly used titles are better, as a clear majority has decided on the 9/11 page.

-SimonP 01:01, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia should respect local conventions and naming standards. There is no overwhelming reason that articles about Canadian elections should conform to the wikipedia standard that was arbitrarily established based on other countries. If Canadians refer to the election as "YYYY Canadian election" then surely that is what the main article should be listed under, with redirects as approporiate. I doubt that any such move would cause mass chaos on an electronic encyclopedia with numerous ways of cross indexing and finding articles.

-Peregrine981 18:33, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There is nothing local about the XXXX Country election format. Americans also refer to their elections in the manner. Its done that way in Chinese for Taiwan too. I don't see why Canada deserves to be an exception to the existing format. --Jiang 23:02, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I agree consistency is important, but in this case I think it is overriden by the causes of proper grammar, brevity, and common usage. - SimonP 23:49, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

I drop my objection to including the word "federal" even though I still think it should be kept for the sake of being informative. "Proper grammar" and "common usage" applies to all English - why just move these articles and not all the others? --Jiang 23:53, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I put the list of federal elections back in this article, it is useful to have a short summary here, and the article is still far from being too long. - SimonP 02:42, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

For categorization, how about the following structure:

Canada ----> Canadian politics ----> Canadian federal elections
                               ----> Alberta general elections
                               ----> Saskatchewan general elections
                               ----> Nova Scotia general elections  (etc.)

All of the Canadian federal election, XXXX pages would be placed into "Canadian federal elections" subcategory. Comments? RedWolf 21:35, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)