Talk:British National Party election results

Article issues

The article as it currently stands is:

1. Unencyclopaedic in that it is in pervasive violation of WP:NOT#STATS, being solely a "long and sprawling lists of statistics [that] may be confusing to readers and reduce the readability and neatness of our articles."
2. Based purely upon primary sources (i.e. raw election results), in violation of WP:PRIMARY "Primary sources ... may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care" & template:primarysources "Primary sources or those affiliated with the subject are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article" (which echoes WP:V which states "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.)

Hence my templating the article for these issues. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 15:06, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Rubbish. You are simply backing up your spurious arguments in the ongoing AfD debate, which has yet to decide if ANY wiki policy is infringed, so your tagging of the article is both premature and disruptive.

1. This is not "solely a "long and sprawling lists of statistics"" and neither is it "confusing to readers".

• Baloney! There is only one, single, lonely, prose sentence in this entire torrent of trivial minutiae. WP:NOT#STATS goes on to say "In addition, articles should contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader." This clearly envisions that articles should not simply be a lengthy recitation of statistics, such as this article represents. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 03:24, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

2. WP:PRIMARY actually says this: "Our policy: Primary sources that have been reliably published (for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper) may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them." It goes on: "Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation". There is no interpretation of the sources, hence no need for secondary sources.

• Gushing out primary information in torrents is hardly using it "only with care". Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 03:24, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

What you also fail to take into account is that this is not a stand-alone article in any case. It is and was created as a split from the British National Party article, an article that is already very large, and is linked from the section there on electoral performance and which itself links back there. Emeraude (talk) 18:18, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

No. What you fail to understand is that WP:NOT grants no exception for subsidiary articles. Rather than 'splitting' this unencyclopaedic material from British National Party, this material should simply have been removed as unencyclopaedic. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 03:24, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Hrafn, read WP:SPLIT on the nature of split-out material.

Meanwhile, I have removed both the {{primarysources}} and {{unencyclopedic}} tags, because a) many of the sources cited are secondary, and b) your view of election results as "statistics" did not achieve consensus at AFD. There seems to be widespread agreement that the article would benefit from explanatory text, and I suggest that if your intention is to improve the article, it would now be helpful if you would help to expand it in that way rather than trying to remove its only content (which at this point would be a tantamount to deletion). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:37, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Way forward

Unsurprisingly, the AfD on this article has resulted as 'no consensus'. There was however a widespread opinion that its current contents are in violation of WP:NOT#STATS. I would therefore suggest removing the "long and sprawling lists of statistics [that] may be confusing to readers and reduce the readability and neatness of our articles" to talk until such time as "sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader" can be found.

Given that, other than the "lists of statistics", the only contents of the article is the sentence introducing these lists, the question would then be, what to use as a placeholder in the meantime? The options would appear to be:

1. A redirect to British National Party#Electoral performance
2. A copy of British National Party#Electoral performance
3. A short stub written from scratch

Opinions? Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 13:01, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

• Well, I wouldn't exactly describe it as a "widespread" opinion, and even then it is just opinion. It certainly was not a consensus view by a long way. As to the closing admin saying "no consensus", I'm not sure that's an accurate description of the debate either! And I repeat, the contents are not confusing to the reader at all - they are extremely starightforward and absolutely understandable to anyone! However, now the debate is over, I am prepared to look at the (helpful) suggestions that were made and, hopefully with the assistance of those people who were constructive, see what can be done. Emeraude (talk) 16:03, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Hrafn, this is now getting disruptive. Please give it a rest.

At the AFD, you seemed to be obsessed with a very narrow interpretation of WP:NOT#STATS, which did not achieve consensus ... and when pointed to numerous other examples of the inclusion of election results on wikipedia, you suggested that they are all problematic. If that is indeed your view, then the most constructive way to proceed would be to start a generalised discussion about the inclusion of election results in wikipedia.

However, your proposals here all amount to a second-bite attempt to delete the article. Deletion was not the outcome at AFD, and removing all existing content from the article is simply another way of deleting it. If you are unhappy with the closure of the AFD, you may open another deletion review, but continuing to pursue a deletion-agenda here is disruptive and tendentious.

If you want to help, how about using some of the references which I provided at AFD to add the explanatory text which many editors wanted to see? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:49, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

No BHG, I am not "obsessed" with WP:NOT#STATS, merely pointing out that this article is in ubiquitous and blatant violation of it. Your "examples" were (i) WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS & (ii) a good reason to clean up those articles as well. Failure to achieve consensus at AfD is no excuse whatsoever to allow blatant non-compliance with policy, or not to clean up an article. On your removal of the article-issues template, I would point out that raw electoral results, without any analysis is always primary source information. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 00:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Hrafn, you made that case at AFD, and there was no consensus to delete. Several participants in that debate offered plenty of reasons for regarding this material as appropriate for inclusion on wikipedia, rejecting your narrow view of WP:NOT#STATS as some sort of total and absolute ban on including election results. Even if you are right to label election results as "statistics" (and I don't agree that you are), your words about "blatant non-compliance" sound very legalistic and black-and-white, but ignore the fact that WP:NOT#STATS does not ban the inclusion of this sort of data. It just notes that a) it should preferably be presented in tables (as this is) and b) "should contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader". On the second point, both I and Emeraude have agreed that such text should be added ... so please can you stop this crusade and either give some time for that text to be written or help out by writing it yourself.

In the meantime, please take time to read Nationwide opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2008. It consists of a series of huge tables, with no explanatory other than the 23-word introductory sentence, yet is specifically cited in WP:NOT#STATS as an example how this sort of material, can be used. I have no doubt that this article can readily be expanded to include even more explanatory text that praised example ... but only if the editors who want to do so are not having their energies diverted into repeatedly defending the article against your obsessive mis-reading of WP:NOT#STATS. Please give it a rest. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

RFC: Is this article in compliance with WP:NOT#STATS

1. Is this article in compliance with WP:NOT#STATS?
2. Is it likely that "sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader" will be forthcoming for the level of detail of data contained in the article?
3. Should the level of detail of data be trimmed/summarised until such time as greater (in the first instance any) "explanatory text" is introduced?

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 00:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

These issues were raised at AfD discussion which closed less than 24 hours ago, which closed as "no consensus". That AfD followed immediately on a deletion review which overturned an earlier AfD closed as delete after only three contributions.

Hrafn made a vociferous case at AfD for the removal of the election results, but there was no consensus to support that position. This RFC is now the third forum at which these raised in less than two weeks. The suggestion in this RFC to "trim the data" is just another variant of the argument for deletion which has already been debated at great length, and as such it is as clear a case of forum-shopping as I have seen.

It's time to give this procedural wrangling a rest and allow editors to concentrate on expanding the article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:12, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

1. BHG: thank you for your repeated, blatant and abusive failures to WP:AGF. While they are not the sole reason for my calling a RFC, they are certainly a contributing factor.
2. This is not "forum shopping" as the AfD came to 'no consensus', so it is not unreasonable to attempt to find a consensus on issues below the threshold of deletion through an RFC. That the AfD did not reach a consensus that this article's violation of WP:NOT#STATS was sufficient a rationale for deletion does not mean that this article gets a license to violate this policy until its (likely) next AfD.
3. This is not "the third forum at which these raised in less than two weeks" as the DR did not raise the issue of WP:NOT#STATS.

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 03:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Hrafn, WP:AGF says "This guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of contrary evidence" ... so it does not require that I continue to assume good faith in the face of your obsessive pursuit of what is at best a bizarrely narrow and pseudo-legalistic view of WP:NOT#STATS. Take a moment to read that 1-paragraph item, and you'll see how it explicitly commends Opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2008 as an example of how to present this sort of data. Note that that article does not concern itself with the actual hard facts of votes cast, but with the much softer category of statistically-derived exercises to measure voting intentions. If you still want to believe that view about this article "violating policy" is correct, how do you account for WP:NOT#STATS praising Opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2008?

Your point that WP:NOT#STATS was not raised at DR is rather funny, because it was also not raised at the first AFD, where the first delete !vote memorably noted "I can't think of what criteria this breaks". The other issues raised there were WP:V and WP:BLP; the first has been solved, and the second was a red herring, but we are still seeing the same phenomenon of an editor policy-shopping in an attempt to find some policy or guideline somewhere which would justify the removal of either this article or its content (which amounts to the same thing). You yourself did that at the 2nd AFD, intially citing WP:NOTDIR and only later changing your mind when you found something else to justify your opposition.

Even if you want to discount the DR, this RFC is designed to continue the position you pursued unsuccessfully at the AFD, by inviting editors to us a crystal-ball and guess whether the article will be expanded to a satisfactory extent. The way to answer that questions is to give time for the article to be improved by the addition of properly-sourced explanatory text, not by asking editors to try to guess whether someone else will write something. How on earth do you propose that editors can second-guess the future intentions of other unknown editors? This is not a request for comments, it's a request for prophesy. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

1. There is nothing "funny" about the simple rebuttal of a fallacious claim -- that this is "the third forum at which these raised in less than two weeks"
2. I would agree that the Opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2008 example is problematic for my view. It would in fact appear to completely gut the paragraph in question, as the information presented is likely to be completely incomprehensible to somebody lacking a fairly detailed knowledge of the timeline of, participants in, and the electoral mechanisms underlying, the election in question.
3. Failure to initially correctly identify exactly which section of WP:NOT is most pertinent does not undermine the argument. And yes, many editors would take one look at this article and decide it's blatantly unencyclopaedic, but then have to search for the relevant policy that matches their first impression.
4. Removal of unencyclopaedic or unsourced material to talk until such time as it can be corrected is a widespread practice on wikipedia. It is generally done where due to length, obscurity, etc, the material is difficult to correct in a timely manner. Hence my question about timeframes.

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:20, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Hrafn, this getting very tedious.

1. It's not a fallacious claim: this is the third forum at which alleged problems with his article have been raised in three weeks, and when taken together the shifting grounds for complaint amount to "there must be some reason why this article is unacceptable". That's why I find it funny: it's all part of the policy-shopping which a few editors, including yourself, have brought bear on this article.
2. I'm glad you agree that the policy WP:NOT#STATS does not support your position. Now can you please drop this disruptive attempt to divert the efforts of editors away from improving this article? You may dislike what the policy says, but as you point out at WT:NOT, it has been stable in that shape for 13 months (which implies a remarkably durable consensus). Continued pursuit of your vendetta against this material is now tendentious and disruptive.
3. You are not proposing the removal to talk of unsourced material nor of material which needs to be corrected; instead you are proposing the removal of the whole of the article's content (now under the generic and vague label of "unencyclopedic", both your previous grounds for objection having fallen). This proposal was made barely a week after the article was restored after DR, and less than 24 hours after the closure of a subsequent AFD. Please can you now have the courtesy to allow editors some time to expand the article, rather than continuing to engage the energies of the editors who want to expand the article in this meta-dispute on ever-shifting grounds? Those of us who want to expand the article can either put our energies into adding the explanatory text you or into defending the article against your efforts to delete and/or gut it, but not both. Please can you agree to a moratorium, say of two months?
   I am asking you to accept in good faith my assurance that I will personally expand the article, and my hope that other editors will also add such material. Come back then and see what the article is like, but please give time for it to be improved. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Recent complaints about this article

With all this "discussion" I notice that nothing has changed. With all the effort put into trying to get this article deleted or to keep it here this could have been transformed into a featured article. In 30 minutes I have made a big step towards writing sufficiently explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader.

By the way, for those that despise the BNP:

Did you know...

• That ignoring a problem does make it go away?

I read a Nick Griffin blog recently and he wrote of 'combating Wikipedia lies'. Would he be so concerned about this site if you guys got your way and had "THE BNP ARE A BUNCH OF NAZIS WHO WILL NEVER GET ELECTED BECAUSE THEY ARE BAD PEOPLE. I HAVE MY FINGERS IN THE EARS SO CAN'T HEAR YOU... YET CAN SOMEHOW TYPE... LALALALALA!!!!"?

Probably not. People would be less likely to use Wikipedia though, they'd probably look for other sites to get their information on the BNP from, such as 'bnp.org.uk' for example. Sort yourselves out.--EchetusXe (talk) 14:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, you are wrong to "notice that nothing has changed". For a start, the results tables have been tweaked to allow sorting. An introductory summary table has also been added. You will notice that BrownHairedGirl and myself have promised to incorporate suggestions into the article from the debate. The 30 minutes you spent writing explanatory text is much appreciated and a step forward; however, none of your words is backed up by suitable references - a serious weakness which I hope you will correct. And some of what you say is confusing if not actually wrong. (For example, "Since 9/11 the issue of Islamic terrorism, combined with a post-war increase in immigration" needs rephrasing to give some sort of chronological sense; "... great success for the party in local elections" - hardly!; "quadrupling their votes in the general election from 2001 to 2005" - only by quadrupling the number of candidates - votes per candidate increased by only 13%; "Nick Griffin, who was considered to hold less extreme political views" - by whom?)

Your comments about those that despise the BNP are aimed at who exactly? And what is the point of them in this location? Emeraude (talk) 15:37, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I quite agree with EchetusXe about the energy wasted on a deletion debate. That's why after the AFD closed, I pleaded with Hrafn (talk · contribs) to give time for the article to be improved, instead of which Hrafn continued to try to use policy to get the content removed from the article, even to the point of a huge thread at WT:NOT trying to change the policy to allow it to be used for that purpose. :(

Unfortunately, when that sort of campaign is being waged, those who want to improve the article have to divert their energies into procedural efforts, because otherwise will be no article to expand. After all the time and energy diverted into process, it'll take another week or so for me to get back to substantive work on this article, but in the meantime I'm pleased to see that others have already taken some steps to add referenced explanations of the context of the results. Please could we all focus on this sort of work on improving the article's contents rather than on off-topic comments about whether anyone likes or dislikes the BNP, or yet more meta-discussion about process? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:45, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

WTF???

WHO THE HELL HAS F**KING DELETED THE CONFIRMED CANDIDATES FOR THE 2010 GENERAL ELECTION?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????/ I NEEDED THAT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU NEEDED THAT!!! BRING BACK NOW YOU F**KING C**TS!!!!

I WILL SMASH YOUR FACES UP GOOD!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.178.253 (talk) 16:18, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I did, get a better source. And if you are going to swear then swear, Wikipedia is not censored, though personal attacks will not be tolerated and you won't smash anyone's faces "up good", because this is an internet encyclopaedia, not a bar on a Friday night. And FYI; you've worn out your quota of question marks for the decade. Darrenhusted (talk) 23:09, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

For clarity, let it be known that no candidate is "confirmed" until his/her name has been submitted to the Returning Officer along with the names of proposer, seconder and supporters plus deposit and the list of candidates is published. Seeing as the election has not even been announced yet, candidates cannot be proposed to the Returning Officer. The shouter above is referring to "prospective" candidates and, given that anything can happen in the next six months to change these, their inclusion is no more than conjecture, infomed conjecture maybe, but conjecture. Emeraude (talk) 10:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

All nominations for candidates have been closed, so is it possible to write down the confirmed number of candidates? Because there are about 338 confirmed.

European Parliament and London Assembly election results

Why will you not accept the European elections nor the London Assembly results on here? Unsigned comment by NatDemUK (talk) 15:27, 20 April 2010

Please sign your conributions to discussion pages. The page was designed for UK national elections; later Welsh and Scottish were added as the elections can be regarded as national there. The London Assembly is no more important than any other local council election and to include all of them would make the page unbearably long and unwieldy. As for European Parliament elections and the BNP, I would suggest the topic possibly deserves its own page; given the convoluted counting method used in these elections it would not be easy to integrate results into the format used here. It could also be argued that the topic is not sufficiently large to merit a page, being adequately covered by the various artricles on the EP elections. Emeraude (talk) 11:28, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

UKIP and the Green Party mention the European election results, so I think that the BNP should have them as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.115.98.137 (talk) 20:16, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

First names of candidates

For the vast majority of the candidates, the original entry was in the form of initial followed by surname. In the case of women, the title Miss, Mrs or Ms was included. This accurately refelected the sources. The addition of first names for a large number of candidates, while very likely accurate (except where abbreviated names have been used) is totally unsourced and certainly not verifiable from the sources given. Should first names be removed? Is there an issue here? Emeraude (talk) 11:59, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Scottish identity

"Despite a great sense of Scottish national identity in the country, in the 2003 Scottish Parliament election, the BNP only stood one candidate, Peter Appleby[26], in the Glasgow electoral region who obtained 2,344 votes (1.1%) but in the 2007 Scottish Parliament election the BNP competed in all the Scottish Parliamentary electoral regions. The Scottish National Party won the election, the BNP achieved 1.2% of the vote and finished seventh."

What's this supposed to mean? Scottish identity and the BNP are often opposed. Unless this is some attempt to link the SNP and the BNP opn a name basis.--MacRusgail (talk) 19:18, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Candidates' first names

Since this page was created, various editors have added individual candidates' first names, generally without citing a reference. In most cases, the information for a particular election is referenced to a results table published by a national newspaper or similar source which does not give the first name but just an initial. This can be taken as accurate and backed by a reliable source. Altering this to show a first name is not backed up in this way. This is not to question the good faith of editors who have made these changes nor, indeed, their accuracy, but there is obviously considerable scope for error and even mischief! I am therefore going to revert all such instances to initials only unless the sources say otherwise. It does, though, seem reasonable to include first names for those candidates who also have Wikipedia articles, since their candidature ought to be referenced on those pages. The alternative is to reference every single individual instance of a first name but, if the sources are happy with just initials I don't see the point. Apart from anything else, we will end up with references taking up more space than the article itself. Emeraude (talk) 15:05, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

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