Category talk:Parliamentary constituencies in the Republic of Ireland

Requested Moves

I have requested moves for the articles listed in in the table below. The purpose of the move is clarity and consistency.

They are all constituencies for elections to Dáil Éireann (the Irish parliament), and I am tryin to convert their names across to the format "xxx (Dáil Éireann constituency)". AS you will see from the Category:Parliamentary constituencies in the Republic of Ireland, about half are already done, and all of the defunct constituencies in Category:Parliamentary (Dáil Éireann) constituencies in Ireland (historic) had been done before I started work.

In each case, the move is blocked by a redirect at the place I want to move the article to, which is why I need an admin's help. I hope the table is self-explanatory. (BTW, note the accents in the names: it's important that those are retained).

A term such as "Carlow-Kilkenny" could easily be used to refer to any number of things spanning the two counties, and the name gives little clue as to the content of the article, except to those who already know.

Even names such as "Clare (constituency)" are less than informative, because they could refer to the former UK Parliament constituencies in Ireland (from 1901-1922). Those constituencies have all been named in the format "xxx (UK Parliament constituency)" (see e.g. Category:Historic parliamentary constituencies in Ireland).

old name	new name
Carlow-Kilkenny	Carlow–Kilkenny (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Cavan (constituency)	Cavan (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Cavan-Monaghan	Cavan–Monaghan (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Clare (constituency)	Clare (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Dublin North	Dublin North (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Dublin West	Dublin West (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Galway East	Galway East (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Galway West	Galway West (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Kerry North	Kerry North (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Kerry South	Kerry South (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Kildare North	Kildare North (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Kildare South	Kildare South (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Laois-Offaly	Laois–Offaly (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Limerick East	Limerick East (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Limerick West	Limerick West (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Longford-Roscommon	Longford–Roscommon (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Longford-Westmeath	Longford–Westmeath (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Louth (constituency)	Louth (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Mayo (constituency)	Mayo (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Meath (constituency)	Meath (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Meath East	Meath East (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Meath West	Meath West (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Tipperary North	Tipperary North (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Tipperary South	Tipperary South (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Waterford (constituency)	Waterford (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Westmeath (constituency)	Westmeath (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Wexford (constituency)	Wexford (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Wicklow (constituency)	Wicklow (Dáil Éireann constituency)

--BrownHairedGirl 16:07, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Requested move votes

• Oppose We shouldn't add gratuitous parenthetical context to titles. We should only add the parenthetical contexts where there's a namespace conflict. --Davidstrauss 18:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I'll change my vote to support if even one needs the parenthetical context for disambiguation. If we need to contextualize one, we should contextualize them all for naming consistency. However, I'm not aware of even one needing the context. --Davidstrauss 21:42, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

As discussed below, the issue arises for Mayo East and Dublin Clontarf. The List of Dáil Éireann constituencies in Ireland (historic) shows several others, including Cork City, Cork East, Cork Mid, Dublin Mid-West, Galway North, Galway South, Kerry North, Kerry South, Kildare North, Kildare South, Leitrim, Limerick East, Limerick West, Mayo North, Mayo South, Mayo West, Tipperary North, and Tipperary South, … and I don't think thpse twenty make a complete list of the names which were used both for a UK FPTP constituency and for a later Irish PRSTV constituency. --BrownHairedGirl 00:37, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose Article titles just need to be unique, nothing more.

• Like David said, no need to highlight context, eg we use Bertie Ahern but not Bertie Ahern (Irish Taoiseach).
• Keep as simple as possible for link use eg it's easier to link to Carlow-Kilkenny than to Carlow-Kilkenny (Dáil Eireann constituency). Less familiar users will be more likely to get the link right.
• If there is no other use for a title, then use it, eg currently no other use for Carlow-Kilkenny, Meath East etc
• They should be as near as as possible to what a user trying to direct-link would use, eg a user looking for the Clare constituency would probably type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare, and seeing the disambig page would think: Clare, the constituency.
• If multiple candidates for a title exist, eg the current Clare constituency vs the old UK Clare constituency, we use disambig. pages. There is then sometimes debate about what article title should be used for each. see Talk:The Nation#Article title for a recent example. Generally, the most common usage inherits the shared title, and the others have extended titles to be unique. Thus Clare (constituency) for the current one, and Clare (UK Parliament constituency) for the historic one.
• Up to now the unwritten naming convention for Irish constituencies is to use the name, eg Kerry South, and if that is ambiguous, add (constituency). Making them all consistent 'xxx (Dáil Eireann Constituency) loses simplicity without adding any great value.
• Any title with a Fada (Gaelic accent), such as Dáil is a pain to use - slower to type - and should be avoided if possible.
• From Wikipedia:Naming Conventions

Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature

--Rye1967 20:16, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose In addition, article names should fit into running text where feasible. Septentrionalis 05:42, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. In many cases, constituencies of the same name existed before 1918. Take Galway East for example, there is another page named East Galway (UK Parliament constituency). I think the focus should be on the constituency, not the parliament representatives attended, i.e. there should only be one article dealing with Galway East before and after 1918.--Damac 06:56, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. For the same reasons as above. Parenthesis must be used only for disambiguation. Švitrigaila 07:32, 10 May 2006 (UTC) I withdraw my vote. I must confess I don't know anything about the subject and I let it to really concerned people. Švitrigaila 19:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is probably my fault for setting up networks of (UK Parliament constituency) and (Dáil Éireann constituency) articles. Those people who objected directly to me favoured a single (constituency) article solution. I have gradually been adopting this by merging articles and adding information about the pre-1801 Parliament of Ireland and devolved bodies. There is a complication that the project to do UK Parliament constituency articles favours a uniform naming policy. I am therefore leaving articles, about post 1922 constituencies in Northern Ireland, in the (UK Parliament constituency) format and where appropriaate providing a link to a (constituency) article for earlier incarnations of the seat. This is not a problem for the Republic of Ireland, where the current constituency articles used the (constituency) format before I got involved, which I was not arrogant enough to alter. Above all I do want a consensus so I do not have to keep on re-doing articles when a difference of opinion emerges. --Gary J 09:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - the consensus on the UK constituency project seems now to have changed, and articles have been moved to the simpler (constituency) disambiguation where there is no potential for confusion. This will also make it easier to provide merged articles on pre- and post-partition constituencies, should there be a consensus for this. I would at least like to see articles on constituencies created in 1918 merged. Warofdreams talk 17:55, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

• Question... Some of these article titles (at least for the list above) already have parenthetical names. I'm not clear on why claifying the parenthetical is a bad idea. I was just about to just do the moves for the requesting user when I decided to pop in here first. I'd be inclined to do them, and do them all, to keep them consistent, except that there seems to be consensus against that right now! I like consistency in main article names for parallel topics, and think redirects are fine for the simpler names. A redirect would be left behind... where there would be a dab needed, we'd want to set that up too... I don't buy the "simplest name trumps consistency" argument, the user gets redirected as long as the right redirects are set up. ++Lar: t/c 15:10, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Where consistency is wanted, the long names are also perfectly good redirects. Septentrionalis 22:53, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
• Comment as the propser of these moves, I find myself very surprised by the degree of opposition here -- but that's why we have talk pages, to discuss it all! Anyway, I want to respond to the points raised to try to change your minds, but it's going to be quite a lengthy reply, so I hope you'll bear with me until later tonight or maybe tomorrow morning. --BrownHairedGirl 16:28, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose per Davidstrauss et al.. James F. (talk) 19:32, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

The case for a consistent naming format

(response from User:BrownHairedGirl)

Sorry for the delay in providing a substantive response to this discussion on my proposal for renaming. I wanted to think carefully about it, because the more I think about, the more complicated it seems. Please excuse me for a very long response.

Background

First, a little background on how it arose. I have been busy for the last few weeks trying to fill in some of the holes in coverage of members of the Dáil and Seanad, and have been creating new articles (mostly quite stubby) to fill the gaps, as well as categorisng existing articles. I created the categories for each session, (Category:Members of the 1st Dáil etc) and have been busy populating them: so far, I have completed the Category:Members of the 28th Dáil and the Category:Members of the 29th Dáil, and a look at the others shows several nearly complete (the categories for the 24th-27th Dála all have over 130 entries).

In doing this, I have been checking the electoral history of every TD whose article I have edited, and in most cases adding substantive text about their electoral history as well as categorising them. That involved editing nearly 400 articles on TDs, (excluding all the dab pages, changes to the election results page due to disambiguation etc), and there are probably another 500 articles to be created as the members of previous Dála get added.

(The reason I mention all this is not to claim a long-service medal or to claim that I have done more than others, but to explain why the issue of the constituency names arose for me, as I tried to build on the huge amount of very careful and detailed work done by others. In the case of constituencies, User:Gary J in particular laid some very solid foundations.)

User:Gary J only arrived on the constituency scene in Jan 2006 so there were some conventions in place before that. Initially, my reaction to his contributions was to raise an eyebrow. However, I have recently read his comments on here and seen his discussion of the issues and I agree that there are complications. I like his proposal of putting all incarnations into one article.--Rye1967 18:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

It's because in the course of these edits, dealing with TDs elected at any time from the 1918 general election, I have been trying to include the constituency details in each case. And I found that process very frustrating.

Frustrations with current naming practice for Irish constituencies

The sources which I have been using to track individual TDs' electoral histories (the Oireachtas members database and the ElectionsIreland.org site obviously list the constituency name, but of course do not list the name used in Wikipedia. The absence of any consistent pattern to the naming makes the job very much more difficult than it need be.

With the constituencies for the current Dáil, the "bare" name (e.g. Dublin South) generally worked OK, but the further back I went, the more unreliable it became. Many of the constituencies did not exist as articles, and some redirected me to an article on "xxx (UK Parliament constituency)", even for an election who took place after 1922. I wanted to be able to simply type "xxx something" and know that I would end up at the appropriate page, but that is not currently the case. There was frequently some burrowing required before I could find whether an article existed or not, and if so what name it had.

But the ones that didn't exist could be created, and the xxx(UK Parliament constitiuency) arose because of the recent work of GaryJ (in my opinion), for which he is introducing a new approach. But whatever the background, I agree that it is now inconsistent, frustrating, difficult, and requires lots of 'burrowing'.--Rye1967 18:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Alternatives

I looked at the Category:Parliamentary (Dáil Éireann) constituencies in Ireland (historic), and found there the sort of clarity which I had found whilst editing articles on British MPs: a single, consistent, naming format which made life much, much easier than having to dig to find the name. With UK Parliament constituencies, editing is easy: just type [[Glossop South-Central (UK Parliament constituency)]] and you had a direct link to the article, bypassing any redirects. (Unfortunately, this isn't the case any more, since some folks have recently started undoing this neat and consistent system: the result needs very careful maintenance, such as the huge table of names created by User:Sjorford at User:Sjorford/Constituencies. That seems to me to be a big step backwards).

The point has been made that this clarity could be achieved by redirects, so that the fictitious [[Goleen North East (Dáil Éireann constituency)]] would redirect to wherever was appropriate: to [[Goleen North East]], or [[Goleen North East (constituency)]] or whatever.

I see a few problems with that: a) I dislike unnecessarily relying on redirects. If I am working on a consistent set of articles, as I tend to do, I prefer in most cases to link directly, e.g, to [[Goleen North East (Dáil Éireann constituency)|Goleen North East]]. It removes the risk of double redirects if a page is moved, and it looks neater. Then where will the redirect end up? That creates two further problems: b) Constituency names, being based on geographical names, stand an inherent risk of being ambiguous if the geographical name alone is used. c) There are particular problems involved naming the constituencies used in Dáil elections, because of the changes in legal structure.

OK, so I see the background for your decision, and I too dislike redirects.--Rye1967 18:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Inherent geographical ambiguity

As I see it, constituencies are NOT geographical entities: they are legal/political entities, created for a particular purpose, usually (but not always) with a geographical location (see the Constituency, especially the second para, which is very good on his point). The exceptions in 20th-century Ireland are the University constituencies, Dublin University (constituency) and National University of Ireland (constituency), which need special treatment because they moved from being Dáil constituencies to Seanad constituencies.

Hmm, thats a fair point.--Rye1967 18:49, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

As such, I believe that the naming of an article on a constituency should therefore reflect its legal/political basis as well as its geographical territory.

Without that principle, constituency names are always at risk of being used for another article. If we consider the fictional county Rooskey, and assume that it is divided into North and South constituencies, Rooskey North is a name which likely to be used for all sorts of administrative, commercial and other divisions: for sporting associations, rotary clubs, health board areas, etc. As articles are created on those issues, who is going to police the namespace to ensure that either: (a) Rooskey North remains the name used for the constituency, regardless of any links needed to [[Rooskey North (disambiguation)]], or (b) links to the Rooskey North constituency are updated in all relevant places to [[Rooskey North (constituency)]]? Who is going to maintain a table of the article names used for Irish constituencies, such as that at User:Sjorford/Constituencies, and check that all the redirects remain intact?

Either of those solutions seems to me to be a nightmare for maintenance, a creation of an unnecessary rod for our own backs.

Yes, its good to avoid the need for lingering maintenance.--Rye1967 18:49, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Isn't the ambiguity inherent in Wikipedia?

The counter-argument expressed above is that this sort of ambiguity is inherent in Wikipedia, and that we disambiguate when needed, but not before. True in general, but I think that the general rule should stop short of this situation.

The names of Irish government departments and ministries have already been placed in a canonical format as "Department of xxx (Ireland)", for convenience and clarity: for example, the only entity in the world that I can find called the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is the Irish one (see Google search[1]), which is quite wisely disambiguated pre-emptively as Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government (Ireland). It's consistent, clear and durable: a little work may be involved in learning the name structure, but once learnt it is clear and guaranteed to be unambiguous.

OK, this is the point where you convince me. I have seen that construct and have no issue with it. And that then illuminates for me what my issue is. It's that the (Dail Eireann constituency) - with accents - looks more complicated than (Ireland)--Rye1967 18:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Surely, with redirects, typing the accents needn't be a problem? I do it by copying-and-pasting from elsewhere in the article, but if an editor doesn't want to do that, then xx (Dail Eireann constituency) would work fine and be unambiguous. -- BrownHairedGirl 20:16, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

The example used above of Bertie Ahern rather than Bertie Ahern (Irish Taoiseach) is quite a good one. There is no theoretical reason why Bertie's successor could not be another Bertie Ahern (although it is highly unlikely), nor why we could not have several Bertie Ahern TDs: we have already been there with other examples, the most extreme being the two TDs named Thomas J. Fitzpatrick whose careers overlapped when they both sat in the 22nd Dáil and in the 23rd Dáil.

So it seems to me that there is no certainty offered by pre-emptive disambiguation in most cases, but there is a high degree of certainty offered in this case: unless someone creates a provisional Dáil Éireann with its own constituencies, there is only going to be one [[xxx (Dáil Éireann constituency)]]. Its boundaries may change markedly (as with Dublin Central (Dáil Éireann constituency), or it may be abolished and then reappear (as with Roscommon (Dáil Éireann constituency) (which existed from 1923–1969) and again from 1981–1992) … but it will remain broadly the same thing: a legal/political entity created for the sole purpose of electing deputies to Dáil Éireann by PR-STV in multi-member constituencies, covering roughly the same geographical area, and operating under whatever franchise rules are enacted by the Oireachtas within the prevailing constitutional requirements.

Pre-emptive disambiguation priciple accepted--Rye1967 18:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I just created Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government as a redirect to Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government (Ireland). The name of the department is the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, just as the name of the Dublin West constituency is Dublin West. Ask an employee of that department where they work, or a voter in that constituency where they vote, and they will say 'Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government' or 'Dublin West'. Also, it's quite possible that somebody might have created a new article at the shorter name, leading to two different articles on the same subject developing without each other's knowledge! In real life, people don't use disambiguation names, they just the the actual name. Wikipedia is the only place where these long names have any purpose and we should be careful exactly how they are used. Therefore, we should always make sure the the short (i.e. real-life) version of every name exists in some way Wikipedia - for example, this and this. I'll leave it to others to argue about whether the short name should be direct to the article, or a redirect, or a disambiguation page, or an slightly-unrelated article with relevent links to other articles and disambiguation pages (like Cork City). But whatever happens, make sure the short (real-life) version of the name exists in some way. Even when linking to the long name, I think we should present the short name of the article to the reader, like so: Dublin West. Readers expect to see the actual name of a thing in the text of an article, not the long-winded hacks we need to use in ambiguous cases. (PS: Can everyone see the border I've put down the left of my comment? Is is a good way the mark out one whole comment? Am I breaking any Talk page conventions in doing so?) Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 12:37, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Aaaron, I think that everyone involved in these discussions has agreed on piping the links, and on ensuring that short names exist in every way. I think you will find that in nearly every case, the short name exists as a page, whether as a substantive article or as a redirect.

However, the question of actual names is problematic, and I'm not sure that you are right to say that Dublin West is the "actual names" of a constituency: technically, I think its name is probably The constituency of Dublin West.

The problem with names like this is that they tend to be shortened to whatever degree works in the context. People who worked for the 'Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government' will rarely said that when talking to another civil servant; they are more likrly to refer to "Environment" or "EHLG". Both abbreviations work fine in the context, but if you strip away the context, those short names become meaningless. Take them outside the context of the civil service, and they probably will have to spell out in full 'Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government', and take them to an international conference and they will probabbly say 'The Irish Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government'.

That's the problem with Wikipedia: sometimes the names will be used in a context where a contraction makes sense, and sometimes they won't. Sometimes the names are inherently ambiguous ("Mayo" is name of a county as well as of a constituency), and sometimes they may be ambiguous (e.g. Dublin West). That's one of the reasons why the earlier discussion concluded that pre-emptive disambiguation was a good idea for constituencies. --BrownHairedGirl 13:56, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Thanks for the reply. I'm not convinced of the argument for preemptive disambiguation. It can be quite dangerous. The name of the department is the 'Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government' and the only place where you'll see '(Ireland)' appended is on Wikipedia. I, or anyone else, could easily have started creating a new page for that department because we weren't aware of the unofficial naming standard in use here (as with the Cavan constituency which I'll discuss shortly). We could easily have lots of different articles covering the same subjects but using different namespaces and being unaware of each other's existence. We now have two articles for the constituency of Cavan, Cavan (constituency) and Cavan (Dáil Éireann constituency). They are two separate articles covering the exact same subject. Prior to me adding the links today, neither was listed at Cavan (disambiguation). We should make it as easy as possible for users to find an article, and for editors to link to an article. This means using Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. In the unlikely event that another country has a similarly named department in the future, then a disambig page will be made at the time. It is the responsibility of the creators of the disambig page then to click Special:Whatlinkshere and disambig any links at the time. If they fail to do so, then no worries, future readers may decide to fix the link if they don't like coming across a disambig. This has the advantage that we do not need to decide a naming scheme today. Remember, there may well be two entities calling themselves 'Ireland' in the future, just as their are two Chinas today. We cannot know what the disambiguation criteria will be in the future, and anyway even if we could be certain I see no advantage because of these reasons. The correct approach for anybody wishing to link to an article on a constituency in Cavan is to first go to Cavan, then to it's disambig link at the top, (Cavan (disambiguation)), and then look for any existing articles on constituencies and link to it. When an article is not listed at Cavan (disambiguation), every reader and editor would normally be entitled to assume such an article doesn't exist (they might now go ahead and make a link, if only to a stub or even to a non-existent page). But in this case, they would be mistaken (twice over) because others failed (twice) to link properly from Cavan (disambiguation). This is caused by two separate people failing to properly check out and update Cavan (and then Cavan (disambiguation)). In fact, if somebody didn't have the time to properly research a link from a list of constituencies, I'd have preferred them to link direct to Cavan or Dublin West or Mayo West or whatever, instead of using this sort of scheme. Somebody else can fix in later, they'll come across the link in the list of constituencies or whatever in future - they can then research and fix it properly as I described in the last paragraph. The only suggested advantage I have heard for defaulting to using the long names (preemptive disambiguation) is that links will continue to go direct to the correct article if there is a conflict in future. However, such an argument is illusory - the creators of the disambig page in future should fix anything that links there at the time. They'll know the appropriate disambig scheme at the time. Such a policy is probably already followed throughout Wikipedia and is more likely to be followed (or even known to users) than any naming scheme we agree here. If they forget, we can rely on readers to fix it themselves. So basically, links made today to Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government or Dublin West will continue to link properly no matter what. With this policy, the only possible disadvantage is in the event that somebody forgets to check Special:Whatlinkshere leading the reader to a slight inconvenience as they click one more link. But that's a smaller potential disadvantage than that of any alternatives (articles going missing, dupe articles). We all agree that the "short" or "correct" name(s) (such as 'Dublin West') should link (directly or indirectly, perhaps via disambig links and pages) to an appropriate article. But we need a policy that ensures that this happens. Using the short name by default is such a policy. It'll increase the chances of everything being linked together properly (see the Cavan articles) by making it easy for readers and editors to find any existing articles. And if there is an actual namespace conflict in future, it will be sorted out as appropriate at the time. I'm quite happy for people to make more redirects using whatever scheme they like. Anybody creating an article should check first for an existing article, and if one doesn't exist they should make sure any new one is reachable from the 'short name' page. I am more interested in making sure everything is correctly linked together, than I am in the names of the articles. It's just I believe that the usual Wikipedia practice of linking to the 'short name' where possible is a better policy precisely because of all the real information-linking issues discussed above. Sorry for such a long post. When I look at this again in the morning I'll probably decide I could have written a shorter one and not subject you to all this! Good night. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 23:21, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Replying to my own comment.... I'm coming around to the idea of having the standard longer links 'xxx (Dáil Éireann constituency)'. But we shouldn't be making it the name of the article except where required by namespace conflicts. The name of the article should follow the Wikipedia standard policies (as short as is possible accounting for namespace conflicts). The 'xxx (Dáil Éireann constituency)' should usually be a redirect, but that depends on namespace conflicts where they come up. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 13:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Types of constituency used in Dáil elections

There is a further problem here is that we actually have three different types of constituency used in elections to Dáil Éireann. Leaving aside European Parliament constituencies (whose size removes the possibility of conflict), we have:

"Type 1"

UK Parliament constituencies, as used for Westminster elections (up to and including 1918)

"Type 2"

Constituencies used for elections to the Parliament of Southern Ireland, i.e to the 2nd and 3rd Dála, (see Government of Ireland Act 1920 (Parliamentary and Dáil constituencies))

"Type 3" : Constituencies established by the Oireachtas, under the Electoral Act 1923 and subsequent legislation

Unfortunately, there is some overlap in naming between them all. Mayo East existed from 1918–21 as one of four single-member constituencies in County Mayo established by the UK parliament … but it also existed from 1969–1997 as one of two Dáil Éireann constituencies in the county. The geographical spread was markedly different (the UK constituency covered about quarter of the county, whereas the Dáil constituency covered half of it), and the electoral arrangements were completely different. It simply does not make sense to combine these two very different legal entities in one article. An attempt to do simply makes for a very complicated and confusing article.

So I suggest that for clarity the Type 1 constituencies should all be named as "xxx (UK Parliament constituency)".

Types 2 and Type 3 constituencies are broadly similar, despite their different parentage: both were designed to use PR-STV in multi-member constituencies to return representatives to an Irish parliament (whether the House of Commons of Southern Ireland or Dáil Éireann). They were not used in UK-wide elections. Since the House of Commons of Southern Ireland had such a short and insignificant existence as a parliament, and since no substantive change in logic was used by the Dáil once it legislated alone, I cannot see a case from a 26-county perspective for giving them a separate namespace.

However, from a 32-county perspective, the case may be different, since the Type 2 (1921–1923) constituencies existed on both sides of the border as products of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (see Government of Ireland Act 1920 (Parliamentary and Dáil constituencies). At the moment, I'm not persuaded that it's worth attributing much significance for these purposes to the House of Commons of Southern Ireland: I just raise it as a concern.

This point discusses the content of the articles as well as the name. There are so many complications, it makes my head spin. While this proposal seems a reasonable division of the content, it is different to what GaryJ is currently implementing, I believe.--Rye1967 18:58, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Summary

What I propose I this:

1. All the Irish (32-county) parliamentary constituencies created up to 1918 should be named as "xxx (UK Parliament constituency)".
2. All the Dáil constituencies created in 1923 should be named "xxx (Dáil Éireann constituency)"
3. All the Northern Irish constituencies created under the Government of Ireland Act 1920 should remain named as "xxx (Northern Ireland constituencies)" or whatever format those maintaining the relevant pages find appropriate, because the issues in Northern Ieland are even more complicated.
4. All the Southern Irish constituencies created under the Government of Ireland Act 1920 should be named as "xxx (Dáil Éireann constituency)", because whatever the legal intention of their creators, their primary de facto purpose was for the election of the 2nd Dáil and the 3rd Dáil.
5. Additionally:
   1. Every article named "xxx (Dáil Éireann constituency)" should have a redirect from "xxx (Dail Eireann constituency)", to deal with the problem of entering accents which User:Rye1967 rightly stressed. I have done that with every article which I moved, and would be happy to complete the task. "xxx (Dail Eireann constituency)" would still be a unique name.
   2. Where there exists both an article such as [[Dromod West (UK Parliament constituency)]] and a [[Dromod West (Dáil Éireann constituency)]], there should be a disambiguation page at [[Dromod West]], with a redirect from [[Dromod West (constituency)]] (fictious examples again). Each article should clearly refer to the other.
   3. Where there is an article such as [[Easkey Central (Dáil Éireann constituency)]] but no equivalent UK parliament constituency, there should be redirects from [[Easkey Central]] and from [[Easkey Central (Dáil Éireann constituency)]].

May I ask those who opposed the moves to reconsider their opposition? --BrownHairedGirl 08:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)</nowiki>

Responses

You've clearly put a lot of thought in! My thoughts, for each of your summary points:

1. 1. This needs input from the UK Parliament constituencies WikiProject; I've left a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies. I would be quite keen to merge articles where constituencies were first created in 1918, given that almost without exception, the constituencies in the South elected members who did not sit in the British House of Commons, and they were effectively abandoned by the UK government thereafter. As the proposal stands, would it mean demerging Dublin Clontarf (Dáil Éireann constituency)?

      My intent was that yes, it should mean demerging. The Tullymandered 1977-81 constituency will (being a 3-seater) have occupied a wider area than the 1918-21 constituency. I'm sure that some core area of Clontarf was common to both, but beyond that they seem to me to be very different entities which simply happen to share the same name. If the 1918-21 constituency was called Dublin Bull Island, we wouldn't think of lumping it in with the 77-81 constituency, and I thik that the shared name is obscuring the extent of the difference between the two creations. I think that Gary J's last purely 1918-21 version was clearer than the merged version, and that as more detail is added, the merged version will become less clear. No criticism intended of Gary J's work, but the merged article reads like two separate articles stitched together, which I think is inevitable in such a merge.

      Maybe it would help if I invert the question: what is the intended gain from merging the two? All I can see is that it allows a shorter common naming system, but have I missed something else? --BrownHairedGirl 19:24, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

   2. This seems to be the key question here; I am not convinced that the (Dáil Éireann constituency) is needed. Given that in almost every case the name alone is ambiguous (which is not always the case for UK constituencies), a standard disambiguator may be needed, but how many constituencies would still be ambiguous if (constituency) was used?

      I'm afraid that I don't have the energy to count the duplicates, but as an editor I don't think that the number of duplicates is that critical: what matters is that if we start having to disabiguate like that, we would lose the consistent naming system, and an editor wouuld have to check an each case whether xxx (constituency) was an article or a disambiguation page. --BrownHairedGirl 19:29, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

   3. Seems pretty uncontroversial.
   4. I fully agree with your reasoning that these constituencies should be treated identically to those covered in point 2.
   5. If your proposals are adopted, these points look very useful.

Warofdreams talk 17:56, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• I am very grateful for this careful analysis and proposal. My hope is that whatever policy is adopted can be applied consistently, so as to make the life of everyone involved easier.

• I started doing Irish constituency articles after working on UK Parliament articles for parts of Great Britain. I had not, at that stage, come across the Wiki project which had adopted a consistent naming policy of using the format Blankshire (UK Parliament constituency). I followed that naming format because I found it in use for existing articles. This is not so problematical in Great Britain as in Ireland. Apart from the pre-1707 Scottish Parliament and the devolved bodies in Scotland and Wales since 1999, the English/British/UK Parliament constituencies form one continuous sequence from the 13th century to the present day. For what it is worth the UK project has decided that Scottish Parliament constituencies should have seperate articles from UK ones, even though they originally had the same boundaries.

• I started on Irish articles by producing a list of all the UK Parliament constituencies used and set up stubs for each of them. For the Northern Ireland Parliament I did articles on the constituencies in each county and Belfast. That led me on to Dáil constituencies. I produced a list of those and set up some stub articles. At this point I ran into difficulties. The existing Dáil constituencies had articles using the format Dublin Mid West (constituency), which I did not want to disturb unilaterally. There was also the issue of the same constituencies being used for different bodies in 1918-1922. Following the logic of what I had been doing I decided that there had to be different articles for each body.

• I then received objections from others (along the lines set out above) who felt that there should be one article for each constituency name irrespective of the bodies the representatives of the area had or might have served in. I then produced a comprehensive list of every constituency ever used for a Parliament type body in Ireland (to my knowledge). This is what I have been working to since. Unfortunately that produced problems with the existing UK Parliament constituency articles in Northern Ireland (which include the post 1973 devolved bodies elections using the same boundaries). I did not feel able to unilaterally alter those articles name format.

• Whilst I will work within any format agreed what I would ideally like would be two hierarchies of territorial constituencies.

1. UK Parliament constituencies (including Parliament of Ireland pre-1801, Commonwealth Parliaments in the 1650s and Northern Ireland devolved body constituencies from 1921 with the same or a very similar name). This would include the use of UK defined constituencies for the First Dáil. Name format Cavan (UK Parliament constituency).
2. A minor category of Northern Ireland Parliament constituencies, which do not coincide with the name of a UK Parliament constituency. Devolved bodies from 1973 have used single-member Westminster constituencies as multi-member Stormont ones, so they do not present any difficulties. Name format Antrim Larne (constituency).
3. Constituencis in what is now the Republic of Ireland. These would include the Government of Ireland Act 1920 and Electoral Act 1923 etc. constituencies. I agree the Parliament of Southern Ireland was too ephemeral to merit distinct articles. Possible formats avoiding the accent problem would be Cavan (constituency), Cavan (Irish constituency) or Cavan (Oireachtas constituency). Otherwise the format Cavan (Dáil Éireann constituency) might be used.
4. Dublin University and National University of Ireland will either have to be split between UK Parliament, Dáil and/or Seanad constituency articles or treated as a special case. The Dublun University article currently covers everything from 1613 and is probably too long, so it would be convenient to split 1613-1922 from 1921 onwards.--Gary J 18:23, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• • There is another minor category for those Irish Parliament boroughs which were disenfranchised at the union. Calling them say Swords (constituency) or Swords (Irish Parliament constituency) would not cause difficulties, as they were too small to be used for later constituency names.

• • Perhaps the simplest solution is to use (constituency) for every electoral district in Ireland that was not a (UK Parliament constituency) at some point in its history. All Dáil seats from 1921 which had the same name as a UK Parliament constituency would have a (constituency) article distinct from the (UK Parliament constituency) one. For seats created for the first time in 1918, which were represented by Sinn Féin, there could be a hybrid form such as (UK Parliament and Dáil Éireann constituency). --Gary J 19:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

MY RESPONSE - SUMMARY: I agree that there is an issue, that we do need a revised set of consistent rules.

I agree with the point that we are talking political entities rather than geographic ones. I think this principle is what has uknowingly guided the seperation of Scottish Parliament vs UK Parliament articles.

I agree with pre-emptive disambiguation to introduce consistency to avoid burrowing around.

I agree with the proposals of BrownHairedGirl on how to divide the content into 2 seperate articles.

This means that the constituency articles linked from the first Dail would be the xxx (UK parliamentary). As proposed, they would also include a reference to the succeeding Dail constituency.

I still dislike the xxx (Dail Eireann constituency) naming for the post-1920 Dail constituency articles, due to some of my original points.

I suggest xxx (Irish constituency) - as I see Gary has also suggested. Use of the term 'Irish' for Dail constituencies should not be an issue, it would not preclude authors working on Northern Ireland constituencies from using it also if they wish, since the geographic names are unlikely to overalp. There will never be a Kerry South (Irish constituency) needed in Northern Ireland.

There is then no need to have re-directs with the non-accented spelling.

This solution does mean re-work of the current Dail Eireann constituency pages and I am happy to help with that.

Re Dublin-Clontarf(Dail Eireann constituency): As I understand the proposals, yes it means demerging the detail regarding the 1918 election would be moved to Dublin Clontarf (UK Parliament constitency), which would then be linked from all relevnt UK elections, plus the First Dail article. Remaining content would stay in the article and be linked from 2nd dail etc

Our discussions will need to be summarised as a policy, which should perhaps then be voted on so that future editors will clearly understand the complex background to the conventions adopted and will be discouraged from introducing new approaches. --Rye1967 19:32, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Rye, I think that what you are proposing here is some way from what I orginally wanted, but it's still a clear, consistent and readily understandble system of naming … and I think we do seem to have a consensus that the important thing is to have a system. To my mind, the precise names are a much less important issue.

I could live with a framework of xx (UK Parliament constituency) and yy (Irish constituency) if others are happy with it. As Gary J has pointed out, the important thing is that we reach a decision and stick to it that articles are not caught in a merge/unmerge cycle. As you say, a policy document would be needed.

If we do decide to move all the yyy (Dáil Eireann constituency) articles to yyy (Irish constituency, it can be fairly easily done using AWB -- I'd be happy to volunteer my efforts there. --BrownHairedGirl 20:30, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

It's great to see this moving towards consensus. While not my first choice, I would be satisfied with Rye's proposals - perhaps with a variation on GaryJ's proposal for 1918 creations won by Sinn Féin. Like you say, the most important thing is to have a clear, consistent and readily understandable system, and this would be one. Warofdreams talk 00:20, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Clarify: Warofdreams, I'm just wondering if I understand this right. Are you proposing that the rule for naming 1918 constituencies should depend on who was elected? --BrownHairedGirl 08:13, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm - not exactly who was elected, but whether the constituency ever operated as part of the UK system. Those won by SF candidates became defacto Dáil Éireann constituencies, while those won by IPP or Unionist candidates didn't. Warofdreams talk 14:47, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Its confusing if some constituencies in the 1918 election were named xx(Irish) and some xx(UK). Better if all were xx (UK). To justify this: The 1918 election was for the UK parliament, so all constituencies were operated as part of the UK system, altho the elected SF candidates didn't sit there. All constituencies in that election which subsequently became Southern Ireland and Dail Eireann constituencies could have a reference in their content for the succeeding xx (Irish constituency)--Rye1967 21:05, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Agree, better to be consistent, and agree that the constiutencies were operated as part of the UK system. Classifying them by whether or not the MP takes his/her seat at Westminster could have interesting consequences if applied to recent Northern Ireland constituencies. --BrownHairedGirl (talk • contribs) 19:25, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

• Question: do we now have suffiient agreement on Rye1967's proposal to write it up as a formal policy? --BrownHairedGirl (talk • contribs) 19:25, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The move proposal above is obviously a don't move, but if you find consensus for the changes now... Feel free to do so. —Nightstallion (?) 07:33, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Recent changes

I have added Category:Historic Westminster constituencies in Ireland and Category:Historic Westminster constituencies in Northern Ireland. I didn't find this talk until after I did it, but I have no second thoughts. I am in the process of moving articles from Category:United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies (historic), Category:Historic parliamentary constituencies in Ireland and Category:History of Ireland 1801-1922 into the 2 new categories. Any help welcome.

The current structure is now:

Category:Parliamentary constituencies in Ireland

• Category:Historic parliamentary constituencies in Ireland
  • Category:Constituencies of the Parliament of Ireland (to 1800)
  • Category:Parliamentary (Dáil Éireann) constituencies in Ireland (historic)
  • Category:Historic Westminster constituencies in Ireland
    • Category:Historic Westminster constituencies in Northern Ireland
  • Category:Constituencies of the Northern Ireland Parliament
• Category:Parliamentary constituencies in Northern Ireland
  • Category:Historic Westminster constituencies in Northern Ireland
• Category:Parliamentary constituencies in the Republic of Ireland
  • Category:Parliamentary (Dáil Éireann) constituencies in Ireland (historic)

The non-wikified names are duplicate mentions of multi-parented cats. jnestorius^(talk) 18:01, 24 August 2006 (UTC)