Template talk:Infobox Election Result

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 Infobox Election Result is within the scope of WikiProject Australia, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Australia and Australia-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.
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[edit] Elections infobox

I have implemented a new infobox (example at right) on some election articles that summarises the two key pieces of information in an election (share of Assembly first-preference votes and number of Assembly seats won), plus the change since the last election, for independents and parties winning Assembly seats.

The table starts with the jurisdiction's flag. The table header makes clear that the scope of the data is limited to the Assembly (ie, not the upper house, if any). Parties are shown in order of assembly seats won, except for a winning junior coalition partner, which follows its senior partner. Odd-numbered rows have a light blue background to improve readability.

Party groups are colour coded. Dark colours are used to improve contrast. No effort has been made to match the corporate colours of any party. Although some Wikipedia editors allocate more colours (Democrats yellow, ONP orange, Greens green, etc) this produces garish pages. The purpose of highlighting the three main parties as a courtesy to readers is defeated if the tables are multicoloured throughout.

  • The Australian Labor Party is shown in red #600
  • The National Party of Australia is shown in green #060
    • The National Country Party is shown in green #060
    • The Country Party is shown in green #060
  • The Liberal Party of Australia is shown in blue #006
    • The Country Liberal Party is shown in blue #006
  • All other parties, and independents, are shown in grey #333

Where parties or independents lose representation in the assembly, the last line of table data has the party name "Others" and notes how many seats all others have lost since the last election. This is to prevent the "win/loss" figures from summing to a nonzero amount.

Note that no percentage figure is given for independent candidates. Although the total independent vote for the election is sometimes available, to speak of statewide support for "independents", let alone statewide swings to or from the "independents", is to misrepresent the nature of an independent candidacy. An elected independent, after all, does not speak for all voters who voted "independent".

Parties with no representation in parliament are not shown in the list to keep it clear and relevant. Full results, including all parties, should be placed in a larger table in the body of the article.

The result figure is shown (to one decimal place for percentages) at text size 150%. The change figure (to one decimal place for percentages) is shown at text size 90%. Upward and downward movements are shown using the ↑ and ↓ symbols. No change is shown with a zero. If the party is newly registered, the percentage change figure is blank. If the assembly is newly established, the seats change figure is blank. The % symbol is not used next to the figures themselves.

The last table row contains the name of the election winner, if any. If the Coalition secures a majority in its own right, the text is "Liberal/National win" or similar, depending on the names, and relative size of the coalition partners. The background is blue #006, except in Queensland, where it is green #060. If Labor secures a majority in its own right, the text is Labor win and the background is red #600. If neither the Coalition nor Labor secures a majority in their own right, or if the Coalition was not in force prior to the election, the result is a "Hung parliament" and the background is grey #333.

(Yes, this means that the party that forms government is not always shown in the table. However, the election and the process of forming a government are technically separate processes. In any case, the article text will explain who formed government and with whose support.)

If no results data is available, a modified form of the table, showing only the result, could be used. Most election results are, however, available from electoral authority websites or elections.uwa.edu.au.

u didn't give us much time to object, Joestella! however this all seems good... very detailed though! who will police? ChampagneComedy 03:06, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Is there any reason why such dark colours have been chosen? Surely making them as differentiable as possible no matter what one's eyesight or monitor type should be a goal here. By mucking around I found that C00 / 0C0 / 00C was the darkest clearly differentiable on a 19" LCD monitor. Orderinchaos78 18:46, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
The above issue has not been addressed. Furthermore, and I didn't realise this at the time I raised my objection above, but this infobox is completely manual and almost impossible to operate for a non-IT literate user. In my opinion (and others may disagree) infoboxes should account for WP:CSB and WP:ACCESS, be easily updatable and in standard form. As someone who isn't even sight impaired, I have trouble with the appearance of this infobox, so I'd hate to think what someone with mild colour blindness would make of it. Furthermore, wholesale implementation of such an infobox does not work in all circumstances (although does in most Australian contexts) as it is not flexible enough to account for minority parties which are majority parties in regional areas or even, in some hypothetical future instance, in a particular region. Orderinchaos78 04:28, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
The infobox should be replaced with a more immediately comprehensible form that can be edited by non-Wiki-literate people without breaking the thing. It's actually very easy to break. DanielT5 05:21, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Colour choices - more important than making the colours distinct from one another is the need to make them distinct from the background. Since the colours do not communicate information on their own, keeping the contrast level high is the most important thing, from an accessibility standpoint. The decision to use colours at all is primarily aesthetic, but does help to communicate some of the table's data more quickly to readers who are not sight-impaired.

Breakability - I invite DanielT5 to recreate the table with the same appearance in a less "breakable" form. I haven't done so because this would necessitate quite a complex template, given the large number of parties contesting some elections.

Comprehension - The idea that the infobox is not immediately comprehensible is a bit difficult to sustain. In the above example, the table reads "Party Labor, vote percentage: 39.9 (up 17.1), seats: 8 (up 3) ... result hung parliament." That's all the key facts, using not very much space. Joestella 07:00, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

With regard to the colours - take a look at these two images taken with my digital camera of the above box:
Orderinchaos78 09:48, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
By comprehensible I was not referring to the data but to the template, it would be almost impossible for a newbie to use and hence it limits updating to a select few users and in the event of an error limits people's ability to fix it. Everything on Wikipedia should be done in a way that anyone can edit it. I know next to nothing about template design and I'm sure millions of other Wikipedians are in the same boat. DanielT5 11:23, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Orderinchaos, your colouring makes it easier to differentiate the colours on certain monitors and for the vision-impaired, but that isn't the point, since the colours do not, of themselves, communicate information and very bright colours pose their own usability (not to mention aesthetic) problems. Joestella 18:09, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

If they don't communicate information, and given the above accessibility/subjectivity issues, and the amount of loading and complexity associated with them in coding terms, which impacts on speed of delivery and server operations, then why have them at all? It seems to make more sense to abandon them completely and just use black on white which is clear and unambiguous. Orderinchaos 18:47, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
The subtle colours (006, 060, 600 and 333) do not require an unreasonable "amount of loading" nor is there a serious "speed of delivery and server operations" concern. (Images and tables present far more speed issues than any font attribute.) The colours simply underscore and embellish information presented in the text in a manner which is aesthetically consistent and presents no accessibility issues. Joestella 20:49, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
They actually fatten the code quite considerably. If they present no benefit (and I am arguing they don't), they should be removed, or they should be improved, especially given the use of LCD monitors by an increasing majority of people these days. I have taken the opportunity to view them on a CRT monitor and there is a clearer difference. There is some argument that colours such as those I have proposed, or a half way compromise, would solve the problem, and testing on both, I'm tempted to think a half way measure would be the best to balance the benefits on each system. However, in the absence of such a compromise, then I would move for the colours to be removed. There has never been any consensus established for the colours, or for that matter against them, so we are free to make a decision here. Orderinchaos 02:49, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

"Fattening the code", to the extent that font attributes do, is not a perceptible factor in load times. Can we agree on that at least? I'm not averse to a compromise between your bright colours and my dark colours, provided that the high contrast remains for the benefit of the vision-impaired. Joestella 04:20, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

i have to say that 600 red looks real dark on a winXP system with an lcd monitor. mayeb split the difference?? ChampagneComedy 09:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I have incorporated the concerns about usability and colour into this template: Template:Infobox Election Result Joestella 06:32, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Good work. BTW the develeopment of an infobox like this was exactly the idea I had in mind when I said "easily updatable" - we need a standard transcludable infobox where the only thing you see on each page is the numbers, which can be changed/fixed/copied/updated appropriately. Orderinchaos 06:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

You can see it in action at New South Wales general election, 2007. Further, I would suggest moving any further discussion of Template:Infobox Election Result to its talk page. Joestella 06:46, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arrows

Good work on this. With the swings, we may be able to do an if statement kind of thing to automate the arrows, I'll mention it to one of my colleagues who knows parserfunctions inside out. Orderinchaos 06:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

That would be great. Joestella 06:48, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Colour

Does this mean we can draw a line under the colour discussion and settle on the 7-based colours listed on /Info? I want to get on with replacing all the infoboxes I added in NSW, NT, Tasmania and the ACT. Joestella 07:02, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah - 6 was just a bit too dark. I checked the 7 on the uni's LCD monitors and it looks fine. At Western Australian general election, 2005 I can actually see the difference on my own monitor now - I guess it's a full 16 points out of 256 brighter. Orderinchaos 07:07, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
I tried 9, and on a Mac it's so bright it gives the table a Play School feel. But having seen 6 on Windows, it just looks black. Glad we could sort this out. Joestella 07:56, 11 April 2007 (UTC)