Wikisource talk:Election data
Election result formatting
editDiscussion moved from the Scriptorium --18:15, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I have a question regarding the formatting of election data on Wikisource: What is it? As far as I can tell, there is no real set format for submitting the election results of numerous countries, for different types of elections, or for a breakdown of different constituencies. This, so far, is fairly problematic in regards to standardizing election results of the U.S. presidential election--I would like to move the results from the primaries and caucuses to better pages than simply "New Hampshire" or "Iowa" (both of which are redirects) or even Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primaries (which or course, are no better than the redirects, for they do not allow for different years to be added).
I know that Ec. has been working with another user for standardizing English election results, so I propose that we move that conversation here and work with it from there. I have some ideas regarding possible ways of doing it, such as a format like this:
- [Year] [Country] [Election type] election results - [Local election result]
- [Constituency]
An example would be
2004 United States presidential election results
2004 United States presidential election results - Primary result: New Hampshire
2004 United Kingdom general election results - Constituency: A
where we would only fill in the required information (i.e., not every bit would be required in the title if it would not be needed). These of course, are only my own thoughts; what do you guys think? Zhaladshar 01:36, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- I'm glad to see that this issue is drawing attention. This is the hierarchy that I suggested for the UK elections:
- The principal idea was based on a top down approach that could be adapted to results from any country. I begin with "Election results" (or possibly even simply "Elections" to reduce length) because that's the most important term in all this class of articles, and the chance of ambiguity with other subjects is less likely. Another advantage of using "Elections" alone might be that it is identical, or at least similar, in several languages. I dismissed the idea of beginning with the country name to avoid shuffling election results with other things that might be developed about the country. Similarly, years are better suited to being tools for disambiguation than for starting articles; I would suggest that years as the beginning be reserved for special instances only.
- The next part of the title is a disambiguation process that identifies just what election we are talking about. Again these are orderred beginning with the broadest concept, most often the country, but it could be something broader still like the EU. Flexibility needs to be retained about the type of election, because of the varied possibilities that can arise here.
- The final part of the title is only needed when the results are so voluminous that they shoudl be subdivided. A breakdown of the presidential primary by county for a small state like New Hampshire can likely be accomodated on a single page while the Texas results may need to be spread over several pages.
- Scalability is an important feature. This kind of approach can be used for section titles within an article just as easily as for the article titles. I hope that I have adequately expressed my ideas on this. Eclecticology 04:31, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- I see your points, and I pretty much agree. Starting with "Election results" would be best because it is the most important element; starting with anything else could be confused with other developments in that same country or other developments in a certain year. Although, one could argue that starting with a country's name would be preferable since it is something that did develop in that country, but I do think since the data falls under a different grouping--that of "Election data"--it would be nice to start with that instead.
- However, I do disagree on shortening the name to simply "Elections." It would be nice to use just that word, but if that section begins to expand ultimately some languages won't have a word for it that sounds similar to "election." I think that for the sake of clarification and narrowing the topic a bit, it would be more beneficial to use "election results."
- I've changed my heirarchy a bit to match something more like this:
- Election results ([Year] [Country] [Election type]) - [Local election result]
- [Constituency]
- An example:
- It's pretty much a condensed version of what you did for the UK election results. I just put the entire heirarchy into one, but I think it still has the same versatility as the other one. The only real change I did was switch the year and the country around, but this is simply a preferential thing--I think it reads a bit better like this--but it isn't that big of a deal. Zhaladshar 21:22, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Thanks. I appreciate your being able to take a big-picture approach to this kind of issue. The main thing for me was to follow the [What it is (disambiguator) - sub-division] format. We can still retain flexibility within the disambiguator as long as we retain consistency for a particular election. Any future development will depend on the experiences that we will have with this. Eclecticology 22:56, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- I accept your argument for not using "Elections" alone. What wasn't clear was whether you were suggesting "Election data" instead of "Election results". Either would be fine with me. Eclecticology 23:00, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Oh. Um...I'm not really too picky about either. If we are only adding material that pertains to outcomes of elections, I would prefer "Election results." If someone can think of other "data" we might add, it might be nice to use "Election data" and add the word "results" later on to disambiguate it from other forms of election data. Such as using
- But I really don't know what other kinds of data we would be using, so using simply
- would keep the length of the name down a bit. Zhaladshar 00:38, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
End of moved discussion