Talk:Results of 2005 United Kingdom General Election

How you can help on election day

 * If any constituences declare before 23:00 UTC (midnight local time), add them to the table of such constituencies.
 * Copy & paste the appropriate text from the list below, adding the word "gain", "lose", or "hold" between the parentheses, into the gain/lose/hold tables when a constituency declares its results. (Please use section editing.) As you do so:
 * Keep the table of totals up-to-date. (Increment each total as you go along. Don't paste in the totals from a source.  Different sources will have different totals, because they aren't synchronized with one another.  It is best, for the sake of self-consistency alone, if our totals reflect what our gain/lose/hold tables say.)
 * Watch interviews, speeches, and public statements. A set of quotations from prominent political figures helps to make this more than a bare set of statistics.  Aim for the same format as used at Pope John Paul II dies, including citing the interviewer if it is an interview.
 * Watch the reactions of the stock markets and of other countries.

Party entries for copying and pasting
These are common combinations. The replace both results columns: These replace the "results not in" text and go between the || delimiters:
 * style="background:red; color:yellow;"|Labour ||style="background:blue; color:white;"|Conservative
 * style="background:red; color:yellow;"|Labour ||style="background:gold"|Liberal Democrat
 * style="background:blue; color:white;"|Conservative ||style="background:red; color:yellow;"|Labour
 * style="background:blue; color:white;"|Conservative ||style="background:gold"|Liberal Democrat
 * style="background:gold"|Liberal Democrat ||style="background:red; color:yellow;"|Labour
 * style="background:gold"|Liberal Democrat ||style="background:blue; color:white;"|Conservative
 * style="background:white"|Speaker
 * style="background:red; color:yellow;"|Labour
 * style="background:blue; color:white;"|Conservative
 * style="background:gold"|Liberal Democrat
 * style="background:yellow"|SNP
 * style="background:lime"|Sinn F&amp;eacute;in
 * style="background:green"|Plaid Cymru
 * style="background:yellowgreen"|Green Party of England and Wales
 * style="background:yellowgreen"|Scottish Green Party
 * style="background:tomato"|Scottish Socialist Party
 * style="background:chocolate"|DUP
 * style="background:orangered"|RESPECT The Unity Coalition
 * style="background:springgreen"|SDLP
 * style="background:deepskyblue"|UUP
 * style="background:magenta"|UKIP
 * style="background:purple"|Veritas
 * style="background:white"|Independent

How you can help before election day

 * Find and upload public domain images of Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy, and adjust the image names here accordingly.

Results

 * Actually, I was going to address both of these very things this afternoon, because there is still much preparatory work to be done here that you can help with, but was sidetracked by an obituary. Here goes. Uncle G 18:09, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In the results, will we just be putting the party name, the party and candidate, or having something like "Conservatives hold Dorset North", "Lib Dems gain Dorset West" etc? Steinsky 16:30, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I was thinking along the lines of a table such as the following (wins and losses here are to demonstrate the possible combinations):


 * So that we have consistent colour and formatting I was thinking that we should set up a palette of boilerplate entries for all of the parties, either here or in an HTML comment, that editors can quickly copy & paste into the appropriate rows as each result is announced. (I don't think that we need go as far as having templates.) Uncle G 18:09, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I quite like the idea of templates. It would make the table much quicker to fill in if it were just a case of typing, etc. (I'll make templates if people like the idea.) However, if someone makes a quick-reference table of the wikimarkup that'll do the same job, so one can copy & paste it as needed, that'll be almost as good. Dan100 (Talk) 23:13, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Copy and paste is better than two-letter templates that are country-specific (and, for some of these political parties, no doubt election-specific). I've started a pallette off below.  Please pick some colours for the remaining parties, and adjust the colours in the party results table in the article to match. Uncle G 04:29, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Labour loses to third place seems stylistically poor to me, though I'm not sure what would be better. I'm not sure exactly what it means for Labour to lose to third place; perhaps that they came below the third place candidate (ie fourth)?  Which is clearly not what is intended by the statement... Roybadami 01:28, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * How about Labour loss; drops to third place? Not wonderful, I'll admit... Roybadami 01:32, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * It's reasonable. Uncle G 04:31, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Also, the prepared story has notes like Election of Charles Kennedy, Liberal Democrat leader which makes it sound like he's already been elected... I'd prefer Charles Kennedy, Liberal Democrat leader, standing for re-election though that may be getting a bit long... Roybadami 15:46, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Or maybe just Constituency of Charles Kennedy, Liberal Democrat Leader Roybadami 15:55, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * You're right. I like the second of your suggestions better.  Be bold. Uncle G 21:03, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Also, in the totals table it appears that the re-election of the speaker is a forgone conclusion. Whilst it probably is a forgone conclusion, I don't think the 1 in the second column should be filled in until the results from Glasgow North East are actually in... Roybadami 17:26, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * It would probably be a newsworthy event, rating an article in its own right (which would be linked to from the notes column), if the Speaker were defeated. You're right again.  Be bold. Uncle G 21:03, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Also, you should decide now how the Glasgow North East result will appear in the results table, and perhaps add it to the example results table above. Assuming he is re-elected, will you show it as a Labour (hold) or as Speaker (hold)?  Will it be red? or white? Roybadami 17:35, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * To amplify, being an ex-Labour speaker, the BBC list him as Labour, and colour him red. I'm not necessarily arguing this is the right thing to do, though... See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/html/703.stm Roybadami 17:38, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * There's an argument that if he has "Speaker" as the party affiliation listed on the ballot paper itself, then that's what we should put, and the seat should be "Speaker (hold)". This is supported by the 2001 election results information from the UK Parliament, which lists Glasgow Springburn as "Speaker (gain) from Labour" and West Bromwich West as "Labour (gain) from Speaker".  These are also how Wikipedia lists those two results. Uncle G 21:03, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Yep, agreed. Speaker gain et al seem bizarre though. Which begs the more important question: are you planning to report gains and losses relative to the situation after the 2001 election or relative to the situation immeidately prior to dissolution?  Which is the norm?  The latter seems superficially more natural to me, but by the look of it the results you are quoting must be relative to previous election, and I don't really know what normal practice is when reporting gains and losses.  Whichever you choose, you should probably make sure it's clearly stated in the To do to ensure consistency.  In any case (hold) is redundant, since only the existing speaker can ever be re-elected... Roybadami 23:31, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I don't know. And it's up to us to choose (this being a collaborative work, after all &#9786;).  Wikipedia treats by-elections separately in its election results lists, so from the Wikipedia perspective the gain/lose/hold is relative to the previous result table, and thus relative to the immediately previous incumbent at dissolution.  My first thought is to be consistent with Wikipedia.  Uncle G 09:28, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

suggestion for colours...
The party colour-space can get a bit crowded, and most parties have more than one colour associated with them.

I think the tables would be easier to read, and nicer if we did something like this:

Note that this also makes the Conservative vote easy to read; black-on-blue is not a good contrast.

If there is support for this, I can write a Perl program to put in the colors automatically without too many problems.

81.5.150.113 11:51, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I do like the white foreground for Conservative results. Changing the foregrounds is fine by me.  I'm hesitant at changing the backgrounds, though.  There aren't any clashes in background colours in our table.  (The two greens are both Green parties.)  Legibility of black text against a background is an issue.  Colour clashes amongst the parties isn't. Uncle G 12:10, 6 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Another example, a bit of a better one this time:

Ths is currently:

A agree that the backgrounds are fine as they are, but changing the foreground makes it much easier to tell Labour from Respect at a glance (On my monitor at least)

81.5.150.113 12:14, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
 * "Perl program"! Search and replace in a text editor.  &#9786; Uncle G 12:30, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Ah, 'tis the same! &#9786; I was thinking if I put a quick script up, it could be reused in future (it'd only be about 3 lines of code). If we'd have planned it in advance, all the colours could have been put in in this way, with users hand-typing the party name and the colours added en-masses when the table is full. Maybe next election... 81.5.150.113 12:38, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
 * That presupposes that all editors will agree on what the party names in fact are. &#9786;  (I took advantage of search and replace to fix some disagreements when I changed the colours.) Uncle G 13:03, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Also, as with Tories, Plaid is usually white text on dark green. This is easier to read than black on dark green so I'll change in the article. 81.5.150.113 12:42, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

By region
You may want to break out results into regional sections, which would be under constant development during the returns phase of the election. Also possible would be separate articles for regions, with Steinsky's Election article serving as project central with links to all the various articles?

I would love to see contributors covering local results, personally. - Amgine 17:04, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Lol. I have visions of me at the Reading counts now. But I expect I'll be watching at home, tucked up in my bed :) Dan100 (Talk) 23:10, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually, I had already mentioned breaking the list up into regions "in another place". It will make editors' lives easier, because they will be able to section-edit the table, and it will make readers' lives easier, because they will be able to locate their own constituency somewhat more easily.  You'll notice that I had already set up the regions as sub-headings, beneath the table, even before I put the table in.  What is required is for some editors to move the rows from the single table at the top into the various regional tables beneath (retaining alphabetical/numerical order within each table).  I'm hoping that some motivated UK editors will sit down and do this. Uncle G 18:09, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't think that we need separate articles for regions. It's not a separate news story in each region (although it might be a separate news story in an individual constituency if something extraordinary happens, such as a party leader being defeated, in which case we simply hyperlink from the "Notes" column to another news article covering that particular story).  Sub-pages might be an idea, but I don't think that the article is really long enough to warrant that if we stick with just the parties and the gains/losses/holds.  We could expand things to the level of the individual counts for each candidate, which would warrant separate articles, but (1) that's a lot of editing to be doing on the actual election day, and (2) I suspect that Wikipedia will be doing that. Uncle G 18:09, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * There are ways and there are ways. For example, you could link to something like
 * Region A
 * Region B
 * Or transclude the separate articles
 * Region A
 * Region B
 * Or get really wild like that floater box to the right. - Amgine 23:59, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * There really won't be that level of news for individual regions. Regions are effectively just arbitrary lists of constituencies to make navigation easier, nothing more.  The news that people will be interested in will fall into one of three classes:
 * "Who won in my constituency?" &mdash; This will be covered by the gain/lose/hold tables.
 * "Who won overall?" &mdash; This will be covered by the party totals table.
 * "What are the detailed results in constituency X?" &mdash; This is too ambitious for the timescale that Wikinews works at. Wikipedia has attempted to have exact per-candidate voting tallies for each constituency, and the wiki process hasn't yet managed to cover all results from the 2001 General Election.  We at Wikinews want our news article up as the results are coming in, not 4 years later.
 * I really think that splitting things up will only be necessary if we are really worried about edit conflicts. Given section editing, the splitting of the table into regions (which I've made a start on), and the rate at which results are likely to arrive, I think that edit conflicts will not be a significant problem. Uncle G 03:29, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * "What are the detailed results in constituency X?" &mdash; This is too ambitious for the timescale that Wikinews works at. Wikipedia has attempted to have exact per-candidate voting tallies for each constituency, and the wiki process hasn't yet managed to cover all results from the 2001 General Election.  We at Wikinews want our news article up as the results are coming in, not 4 years later.
 * I really think that splitting things up will only be necessary if we are really worried about edit conflicts. Given section editing, the splitting of the table into regions (which I've made a start on), and the rate at which results are likely to arrive, I think that edit conflicts will not be a significant problem. Uncle G 03:29, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Do it live?
I'll be up that night (I live in the UK), so might fill the table in as we go (that's a lot of work though...). However we could first publish the story with a title like "Results come in for 2005 United Kingdom General Election", then move it to "Results of" when all/enough seats are in.

BTW anyone else interested in doing it 'live'? Results will be coming in from around midnight here, so that's 5am EST. We'd probably need to co-ordinate to avoid duplicating work and edit conflicts. TBH I doubt anyone will be checking here for election latest, but that table will need filling in some time... Dan100 (Talk) 23:08, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Err, that's 7 p.m. EST ! -- Arwel 02:21, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I expect to spend much the night online watching as well... moral support and all that. We could coordinate using IRC, or other tools. - Amgine 03:36, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * My view is that this article should be published (with the initial sections HTML commented out and a short placeholder introduction) at the moment that the polls close, with a neutral title; and then when victory is mathematically certain, the appropriate introduction uncommented and the article renamed to the appropriate headline. Uncle G 03:45, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I would've been willing to do it live, but I'm hoping to be down at the Newbury count. -- Joolz 11:04, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * FYI, a few of us over at Wikipedia are doing some groundwork over the next fortnight so we are ready to post full results up, it's best if I give you the link so you can read the conversation: wikipedia:Wikipedia talk:UK Wikipedians' notice board. I would probably stay up until 2ish, and do the any outstanding results in the morning. A few others would probably help over there as well. GregRobson 16:31, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Dumb question from a rather occaisional wikipedian, on the off chance that I feel like making an edit or two (eg to add my consituencies results, if I notice they're not there yet)... What happens if two people edit an article simultaneously?  The the second editor simply overwrite the first editors edits, or is the wiki clever enough to compain? Roybadami 23:37, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * You'll see an edit conflict warning. Section editing alleviates this to some degree, since it speeds up page loading when editing.  You've prompted me to add the notices that I've been meaning to add for some while. Uncle G 04:31, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks Roybadami 17:07, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
 * It's worth noting that even if you're editing different sections of the same page, you'll still get an edit conflict. Dan100 (Talk) 17:10, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I have a recollection of that not happening to me, once. In any case, though, section editing is still a way of reducing edit conflicts, for the simple reason that it makes it that much quicker to load and to save the page (since the entire page content doesn't have to be transferred and rendered), and thus reduces the window during which conflict can occur. Uncle G 02:03, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * When both editors are editing sections, and the sections are different, there will be no edit conflict. If either are editing the whole article, there will always be an edit conflict. So, always edit at the smallest section level when possible to avoid conflicts. - Amgine/talk 03:08, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
 * There are three four things that can be done without waiting for any results:
 * moving the page to Results of 2005 United Kingdom General Election
 * listing Results of 2005 United Kingdom General Election on Developing Stories
 * removing the "prepared story" template
 * adding   to United Kingdom general election, 2005
 * Anyone willing to be around at precisely 21:00 UTC? Uncle G 10:26, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I'll be around. Do I just remove the 'prepared story' notice template? --Cavrdg 19:09, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
 * It seems safe to do the move now, ahead of time, so I have. The rest is as above, and as detailed at Story preparation.  I'll be back in a few hours. Uncle G 19:26, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

IRC real-time coordination
I'd like to encourage editors to use IRC to coordinate their updates to the election articles. Wikinews has a couple of channels, and can create a temporary one for this event. #wikinews (international channel) and #wikinews-en (english edition) are available. - Amgine/talk 20:35, 5 May 2005 (UTC)


 * See #wikinews-election. → CGorman (Talk)  21:47, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

is this news or statistics?
statistics... lost --> Edbrown05 06:00, 6 May 2005 (UTC) <-- there


 * check out this statistic out for this recent encyclopedia-like reporting. Yahhh, like Wikinews wants to be an encyclopedia. -Edbrown05 06:37, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Column width
Any objections to setting column widths by percentage?

ie:

South East London
I think this looks a lot neater than having each table with different widths for the various columns. 81.5.150.113 12:56, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
 * One tiny point: 24 + 24 + 24 + 24 + 5 = 101. &#9786; Uncle G 13:43, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
 * 'Tis the same! THe bowsers treat this as a weighting anyway (we could have it set to 200% per column if we really wanted) 81.5.150.113 17:00, 6 May 2005 (UTC) Still, think I'll make it 24+24+24+24+4 (=100) 81.5.150.113 17:00, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Table not correctly terminated...
editprotected The first table in the section "the race to declare" the first table doesn't seem to be correctly terminated?ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:41, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ •–• 17:43, 9 September 2020 (UTC)