Talk:Treasury Select Committee

Out of date

The 2017-now table is quite different to https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/treasury-committee/membership/, e.g. no Steve Baker. -- Ralph Corderoy (talk) 11:42, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

References

There's only a single reference (about news update), so I think ref improve is in order. Obviously a notable topic but a couple of refs at least would establish that. Widefox; talk 18:28, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, you are quite wrong. The entire membership table is sourced to the committee's website (you may have noticed the word "Source" with a link after it immediately below the table). Each change in the "Changes in membership" each contains its own source. That leaves precisely three items to be sourced. The first sentence of the lead is not sourced, but I wonder what part of the claim that the Treasury Select Committee is a committee of the House of Commons do you find controversial? The second sentence claims that the committee examines the Treasury and its associated agencies; again, what about that do you find controversial? Third and final sentence is sourced. So I ask again, what exactly do you think needs a source? A refimprove template is only appropriate when so little of the article has a source that marking each item with a tag would be tedious. Here there does not appear to be even one time that needs to be sourced. -Rrius (talk) 21:18, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

nope I'd missed the inline (primary) external links. As WP:CITE doesn't list that citation style, do you think {{citation style}}, {{linkrot}} and {{primary sources}} would be more apropriate? Might be quicker just to fix? Widefox; talk 23:57, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

No, none of those would be appropriate. The citation formats used are perfectly acceptable for tables. More specifically, {{citation style}} is about a mix of footnotes and in-line parenthetical refs in prose. {{linkrot}} is about barelinks, of which there are none at this article. It is fairly standard for tables to have a column for sources with bare links enclosed in braces (e.g., [1]), but this table goes a step further and notes where the change is coming from (usually Hansard, but sometimes the Vote and Proceedings). Finally, you don't seem to understand WP:Primary. The point of that policy is to avoid dubious claims. Citing the official reports of a legislative body as evidence of that body's having done some act (or even of a particular legislator of having said something) is not a violation of the guideline. What's more, Hansard and the Vote and Proceedings are not just the best evidence of what happened, for 99.999% of changes to committee membership, they will be the only evidence. If you actually read the policy, you will find this, "Appropriate sourcing can be a complicated issue, and these are general rules. Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are appropriate on any given occasion is a matter of good editorial judgment and common sense." That clearly states that using primary sources is sometimes appropriate. This is a situation where there is no reason to doubt the veracity of the source. No one at Hansard has an incentive to lie or to have made a mistake about what transpired. The matter being asserted is not an interpretation of events, but a recounting of unimpeachable facts. You seem to have seen something here you aren't used to seeing and decided something must be wrong, even if you can't adequately identify what that something is, but the fact is that there is nothing wrong with the citations in this article (and the rest of the Commons select committee pages). -Rrius (talk) 00:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

• OK, when you say "perfectly acceptable" and "fairly standard" this is precedent (other articles) right, not guidelines? I don't personally find it acceptable but see there's other tables like this, yes. Not sure how much weight precedent has over guidelines...can you point to where in WP:CITE or other, or why tables are exceptions, or the principle of precedent of other articles overriding the content guidelines (WP:CITE, WP:EXT, MOS:TABLES). In fact the MOS:TABLES example uses refs not inline EXT. Those all set a high bar for justifying, and the only counter I see is precident, so why is it so worthy of an exception?
• Yes {{citation style}} gives the example you quoted, but no it does not say it is limited to that example, so is not excluded....technically either 1. inline external links in tables are accepable (per your claim) so it does apply, or 2. they are not a major citation style (per not being in WP:CITE or MOS:TABLES) so does not apply.
• As for linkrot, obviouly "Hansard" visible link text does not help at all in the context of broken link recovery, so that sets the bar even higher for justifying this.
• I would say we agree Hansard is primary and independent. No problem at all, just we only have one secondary for the article, hence a primary tag. There's room for improvement wouldn't you say, whether I have read (or understood) WP:Primary or not. Widefox; talk 15:16, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Let's take those in no particular order. It is astounding that you can believe the last two sentences you wrote. It is no problem at all to none secondary source if there is only one fact to be referenced by a secondary source. Of course another problem with your complaint is that there are two: the source for the main table is in fact a secondary source. It is a list of members provided by the House of Commons Information Office. Indeed, one could easily argue Hansard isn't really a primary source because it is independent of the source (the MPs actually speaking). In any event, no we can't agree. The fact that is that you either don't understand WP:Primary or you don't understand the purpose of such templates. {{Primary sources}} is a cleanup template meant to tell editors that the article has a problem that they can help fix. So either you don't understand that there is no problem with using primary sources when the situation warrants, or you don't understand that you don't go slapping up cleanup templates when there is nothing to fix.

As for linkrot, you again don't understand what is going on. The contents of this table will be deleted the day the writ drops for the next election. The information has a significantly short term of usefulness that your concern is meaningless. If the links actually die, I will fix them. And anyway all of the information needed to replace the links is noted in the table (which is to say the date of the change and the publication).

{{Citation style}} is meant to be used when there is a problem. There is, once again, none here. If you really want the source for the main list moved to the prose, that's fine, but there are a lot of these articles, and it will take quite some time to get to it. And there is a third option alongside the two you propose: Tables are not "inline" and can be handled (as they often are) differently. Despite what you say, having the tables as they are does not in anyway conflict with either policy (especially since MOS:Tables doesn't say shit about citation formats). So the basic point is that again you see a problem where there is none. To be perfectly honest, I would not have designed the table as it is. The format is reasonable though, so I've left it as is when I started regularly editing these committee pages.

As for your first paragraph, they are perfectly acceptable because the format has developed over time as a means of solving a problem (specifically how to source entire rows of tables) that does not (despite what you seem to imagine) conflict with WP:Cite. Tables are not prose. They are a different way entirely of presenting information and pose their own problems. This is why, for instance, tables don't have to have the same date format as the rest of the article. The uniform use of a different citation style is just the same. You have seen a problem here that simply doesn't exist.

But let's put it a different way: What is the ultimate point of your continuing to object on this? Do you think you are doing the project some huge favour by harping on this? You've clearly found out that tables elsewhere also do this, so why are continuing to fight this here? Making the changes you want to passive-aggressively ask for through cleanup templates would require hours and hours of pointless, tedious work not just here but at all the articles that are like it. The current format has several years behind it, so it is well established as the consensus.

My best advice to you is to drop this. My second best is to wait until April-ish 2015, when the election is supposed to be called. At that point, proposing a change that would effect all of these articles would be a minor nuisance rather than a massive pain in the ass. You should also state exactly what you want. Would the refs continue in a column called "Source" filled with just a list of numbers? Would the "Source" column go away, with the sources put in the "Date" column?

Part of the point here is that (aside from obtaining a better understanding of what the guidelines actually are and why they exist) you should put some thought into what changes your impulses would actually require rather than just slapping up cleanup templates and leaving the rest to others. Even if you aren't going to do the work, you should have some idea what you are asking of others instead of putting up the template and then insisting on it vociferously on the talk page. As about the only person who actually bothers to watch and update these articles, I am telling you I don't acknowledge the problem exists, and since the only others who seem to edit these articles are the ones who developed the format, I doubt they will either. There is no way I'm going to compromise just to see the back of you because doing hours and hours of work just to get rid of you is not something I'm willing to do. And yes, the most galling part of your insistence has most certainly been your lack of any consideration of the effects of your desire to senforce an extremely narrow interpretation of guidelines. -Rrius (talk) 08:24, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

There's no need for this incivility. Both viewpoints may have merits, and there have been similar viewpoints expressed before here, here and here. Saying that, embedded links are deprecated per Wikipedia:CITE#Avoid embedded links and (the essay) WP:ECITE is clear that a footnote is needed for the complete reference anyhow. This would seem to undermine the convenience argument, as does such a long discussion on a couple of refs. I will add {{more footnotes}} as a compromise. Widefox; talk 15:41, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Right back at you. If my view has merit, what on earth is so bloody difficult about waiting? What you seem unable to understand, though I can't see how, is that this is just one article among dozens of identically formatted lists. Doing what you want done would take several hours of tedious drudgery. Waiting until the dissolution would convert it to just one minor part of an already necessary (an much easier) effort. So unless you want to go through all of the articles and do it yourself, please stop tagging this one. If as you say both viewpoints are valid, then leaving off your tag graffiti in the meantime shouldn't be too terribly painful for you. And if it is, do the hours of work yourself. The articles as is does not violate any policies, and essays are meaningless, by the way. If nothing else, the current system works, so should be left alone (certainly for now) under WP:IAR. And finally, the links are not wp:Bare URLs, so stop trying to use policies and templates about bare URLs here. The distinction is not one with a difference. The link text currently provided, taken together with the content they support, gives ample information to go about finding a replacement in the event the links die. -Rrius (talk) 10:49, 11 December 2012 (UTC)