Template talk:NZ party list candidate

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the NZ party list candidate template.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

	New Zealand portal This template is within the scope of WikiProject New Zealand, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of New Zealand and New Zealand-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.New ZealandWikipedia:WikiProject New ZealandTemplate:WikiProject New ZealandNew Zealand articles
	This template is supported by the New Zealand politics task force.

Elections and Referendums

This template is within the scope of WikiProject Elections and Referendums, an ongoing effort to improve the quality of, expand upon and create new articles relating to elections, electoral reform and other aspects of democratic decision-making. For more information, visit our project page.Elections and ReferendumsWikipedia:WikiProject Elections and ReferendumsTemplate:WikiProject Elections and ReferendumsElections and Referendums articles

Closing bracket

It says on the documentation page:

3. The code |}, which ends the table.

That would appear to be an unbalanced bracket. I don't think it's needed at all. Any thoughts? Schwede 66 04:57, 15 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I'm partially wrong. It's unbalanced, but it is needed. In order to keep bracket bot happy, shall we replace that with the {{end}} template? Schwede 66 05:01, 15 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I replaced it with {{NZ party list end}}, which is currently a redirect to {{end}}, but will allow for changes in how the table is generated later (e.g., with something other than simple html table). the other option would be to merge the begin/end into a single template which takes the list of candidates as input. this would reduce the number of templates and make it more difficult to improperly close the table. Frietjes (talk) 16:21, 15 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great - thanks! Schwede 66 18:52, 15 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Per WP:COLOUR "Ensure that color is not the only method used to convey important information"; there need to be symbols (eg, daggers, asterisks) to denote different election statuses. Also, great initiative to start a concise standardisation of these lists, but why set up a template system for what are reasonably simple tables? Note that there are template limits to an article, and the more templates used in a page, the slower it loads (and templates stack, ie templates in templates in templates all count). Adabow (talk) 09:52, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and a key of some sort is needed. Adabow (talk) 09:55, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Vardion set these up a couple of years back. I wonder whether this will show up on his / her watchlist. Schwede 66 10:10, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

With regard to the colours: the colours just correspond to whatever is shown in the Results column (and only appear when there's something in this column), so the colours aren't "the only method used to convey important information" — they're purely auxiliary, as they're supposed to be. Wouldn't adding symbols or a key would just duplicate what's already spelled out in the Results column of each row? Consulting a key to learn that green equals "elected from list" (for example) doesn't tell you anything you don't learn from the Results column directly. As for why templates were used at all: things may have changed since then, but the main reason was sorting. Various things that people might want to sort by (for example, a candidate's change in list position from the last election) didn't sort properly without hidden sortkeys, and a template automated the inclusion of things like that. The template also automates the colours, generates certain links, auto-calculates the change in rank, and a few other things. It may be that all this can be accomplished other ways now (though I personally don't have much time to experiment with it right now), or people might not mind doing in manually (or not doing it at all). -- Vardion (talk) 19:29, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Photos

Group ping for Vardion and Frietjes (Vardion—Frietjes): would one of you be so kind and add the ability for the list to have a column for photos? We've promised parties that we'd add portraits to these lists (this one in particular) if they made sets of candidate photos available to Commons. This is now being taken up and so we better deliver. I envisage that it's done like the Living New Zealand dames and knights article (where photos are 60 px wide). I'd envisage the photo to go to the right of the name. I presume that whether a photo column gets created is defined in the Template:NZ party list begin and then it would be a matter of manually adding that column for each Template:NZ party list candidate entry (which can then be populated with the filename). Does that sound like the right approach? Schwede 66 18:21, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

User:Schwede66, do you want to make the image column for all transclusions, or just optionally? I have added some code so that |image=y goes in the header and |image= goes in the row template. what I have in there right now requires adding |image= for all the rows. if there is no image, then leave the value blank, but the parameter has to be there for the column to be added. Frietjes (talk) 18:29, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Frietjes, not sure what you mean. Can you please elaborate? I assume that it has to be optional as there are a lot of existing uses of this template that won't have this parameter. Schwede 66 18:37, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

User:Schwede66, currently only nine articles. so, are you planning to add images to all of the articles listed here? if so, we can have the column always appear and just be blank when there are no images added yet. Frietjes (talk) 18:40, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Frietjes, no, most of the time, we would not have sets of photos. I'd like to incentivise the parties to make photos available, hence it's better that by default, we don't have that columns. By the way, I've added the column here but the image doesn't display. Is that because I've got the parameter defined in the wrong location? I did a search and replace and therefore, it's not the first parameter in each template. Schwede 66 18:46, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

User:Schwede66, I had it using raw input syntax, but now it's using Module:InfoboxImage so you can just provide the name of the image, rather than pass the entire formatted image. Frietjes (talk) 19:44, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Frietjes Splendid. Thank you! Schwede 66 21:07, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]