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Latest comment: 7 hours ago6 comments3 people in discussion
The table has a heading "party of notional incumbent" but gives no explanation of this term, nor any source for the data. There is also nothing to indicate whether a constituency has the same boundaries as previously. For example, Westmorland and Lonsdale's boundaries changed so that the BBC describes it as a Lib Dem gain from Conservative, although Tim Farron held a seat of that name previously. PamD05:54, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
And the previous MP for Leeds North West was Alex Sobel, Labour, although Stewart Andrew, Conservative, described here as the incumbent, was MP for Pudsey. Yes, the boundary changes make things confusing, but this table oversimplifies the situation. PamD07:02, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
I agree that the boundary changes make things confusing. The heading is party of notional incumbent before election, but the reference relates to the notional results of the 2019 election, which doesn't take account of byelections and defections during the course of the parliament, or changes in notional party resulting from the boundary changes. Would it be better for this column to show the notional party at the 2019 election and explain any changes in the notes column? JSboundaryman (talk) 08:51, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
@PamD - Should I go ahead and change the second column to notional party at 2019 election and make appropriate notes for changes, as suggested above? JSboundaryman (talk) 18:36, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
@JSboundaryman Just make it clear what source(s) you are using for that column. At present it appears to have come from thin air. I added the source to the 2019 list, but I don't know what other source was being used. The whole question is very confusing, far beyond this list - Tim Farron held his seat, despite boundary changes (but no change of name), and it was called a Lib Dem gain from Conservative. That sort of thing needs explaining, for future readers of our encyclopedia. The concept of notional election results is something new to most people, and I found it reassuring to find an "official" version at UK Parliament.
Presumably the practice in previous versions of the list was to show the incumbent as at dissolution, ie taking note of all byelections, defections etc. I don't know how we can/should cope with that alongside boundary changes.
There are some muddles, anyway: Leeds North West (where I used to both live and get involved in election campaigns) was divided roughly 50-50, 2 wards into each, into a revised Leeds NW and a new Leeds Central and Headingley. Alex Sobel (Labour) was the incumbent in Leeds NW, and then won the new Central & H seat (which also incorporated parts of Hilary Benn's old Leeds Central, most of which became Benn's new Leeds South (which had previously been abolished in 1983). Stuart Andrew, billed here as the incumbent for Leeds NW, was the incumbent for the old seat of Pudsey, and it's confusing to call him the incumbent for LNW, and to say that it was previously Conservative (hasn't been since 1997). Ah, looking at it, I see that Pudsey contributed 52.7% of the population, although only 37.7% of the area, of the revised LNW, so there's an argument for calling Andrew the incumbent, but it's very confusing to do so. Aaaargh. TLDR: Perhaps I'm saying that there needs to be a big red flag in that final column saying "new seat" or "boundaries changed", with a link to that "overlaps" page or some other authoritative source.
Possibly the whole format of the list gives undue prominence to the outgoing MP anyway - as it's billed as a list of MPs, it would be more natural to see their party and name as the first couple of columns, the most prominent, with the electoral history downlighted to the later columns. There's already been at least one enthusiastic editor "correcting" to the winning candidate's party. But I suppose consistency with previous similar lists is probably useful. PamD19:06, 9 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
The "notional" column should indeed be the notional 2019 results, not the state of Parliament at dissolution, given that one can confidently say the boundary changes affected almost every seat. (I'd wager they did in fact affect every single seat, but I'd be hard-pressed to prove it.) Since effectively every seat is a new seat, references to "new seat" and "held seat" are not useful. In that final column, I would think we should state only the following:
the names of any incumbent members defeated in contesting that constituency;
for any incumbent member, the name of their previous constituency if it was not the same as in 2024; and
for any incumbent member, if they were elected at a by-election.
IMO it's perfectly fine for this column to be blank in the case where we have nothing useful to say, rather than "seat held" or "gain". I'm not tied to any particular form of words, other than that "by-elected" is not a word. 86.164.84.23 (talk) 03:13, 10 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
This gets strange: the code looks identical, with "data-sort-value" provided, but it just doesn't sort on that key. Presumably there is some subtle difference to the table code ... can someone please find the problem and fix it? When I sort on member name I consistently see Abena Oppong-Asare at the top and Zubir Ahmed at the bottom, while the 2019 list, sorted, runs from Diane Abbott to Daniel Zeichner as expected. @Roc0ast3r and Moondragon21: as creator and recent editor of the list. PamD08:09, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Looking at the code, it looks like data-sort-value is provided in some MPs, but just doesn't exist in most of them. Heidi Alexander, Rushanara Ali, and Tahir Ali—for example—are between Alex Sobel and Alice MacDonald; both Sobel and MacDonald don't have the data-sort-value attribute added, while Alexander and both Alis do. Basically: the table is working as intended, it's just that the majority of MPs don't have a sorting value attached to their respective row. Also doing a CTRL+F search for "data-sort-value" brings 128 results, and there are 650 total MPs. Clearly, the data-sort-value attribute is lacking. RONIN TALK08:29, 6 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Roc0ast3r Ah, thanks. I only looked at the top one or two, saw that they had the data-sort-value, and assumed consistency (why?!). So there's some tidying-up needed.
But another time, people, please remember if contributing to a sortable table you need to consider sort values - there are a couple of ways to do it but it's much easier to do it when adding data than retrofitting. The first few entries were added with data-sort-value, and I suppose later editors were just keen to get the "me, me, I added them first" buzz, rather than continuing to create a well-crafted list. (Yes, one reason I stayed up till 5:30am was because I had a nice little draft prepared for the person I hoped would get elected locally, and I wanted to create that article myself, so I recognise the feeling). This is an encyclopedia not a news outlet, the results were available elsewhere, so it would have been better to slow down a little and continue to create a good table, following the model of those first few entries. PamD15:45, 7 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
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