The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was not promoted 19:08, 18 March 2008.

List of Canadian Prime Ministers by time in office[edit]

Useful: It has a clearly defined scope, and is a classification often discussed when talking about Canadian political history.
Comprehensive: All past and current prime ministers are included.
Factually accurate: Dates are given by the Library of Parliament and calculations are done by Wikipedia software.
Uncontroversial and stable: There are no edit wars going on.
Well-constructed: I think it's pretty well organized.
Concise lead section: Three short paragraphs.
Headings and table of contents are not applicable.
One image that is public domain and captioned.

--Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:16, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Needed improvements of --Golbez (talk) 19:29, 29 February 2008 (UTC):[reply]
- Dates or order. Absolutely no context is given as to when these people held office.
  - Done I can't really add the order because Canadian politicians don't appear in the order twice when they have a divided term like US politicians do. I'll add the years they served to show when abouts they were around. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:50, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Use days, not years, since years can have a variable length. It's not a huge issue since none of these figures are identical, but if Borden had stayed in office for only six more days, there would be ambiguity between his and Mulroney's lengths, since one could have two leap years and the other only one. Best to avoid any such possibility.
  - Since none of them are ambiguous, having it in years and days seems a lot more natural to read. Saying that someone was in power for 7,824 days is kind of meaningless until our readers do the math to figure out how long that is. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:50, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- See List of United States Vice Presidents by time in office for a good model for the above two changes.

Resolved comments from Matthew

Comments of -- Matthew | talk | Contribs 07:57, 1 March 2008 (UTC):[reply]

First, the title used here, "List of Canadian Prime Ministers by time in office" is actually a redirect to "List of Prime Ministers of Canada by time in office".
- Done It was moved after the nom was made; fixed now. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:13, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Explain what "as long as their government maintains the Confidence of the legislature" means. It's too jargony right now.
- Done Rephrased. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 08:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The last sentence of the firt paragraph in the lead needs a citation.
- Done Added. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 08:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Dates for when they held office would be good
- Do you know of any way I can fit the full dates for PMs with two or three separate administrations without making their rows three times taller or way to cluttered? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 08:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - I don't think it matters if a few rows are taller than others, as long as the list is complete and comprehensive
What are Mandates?
- Done Wikilinked. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 08:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
<ref></ref>s are being used instead of something like ((ref label))s and ((note label))s throughout the table.
- I don't understand the point of changing notes to ((ref label)), it seems to have the same effect as <ref>, but with more complicated code. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 08:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Because they're not references, they're footnotes.
    - Done --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:13, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Under "Sources": *"Calculations are done automatically." by whom/what? Also, this isn't a source, it's a footnote.
- Done Removed. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 08:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What is currently refs but should be notes, should be in a "Footnoted" section; and the "Sources" section renamed "References".
- Done Renamed. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 08:18, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if one reference link suffices a list like this. Especially as since it's from the Canadian Government website (right?) it would mean it's not a third party source. This one reference could probably be used in conjunction with other references though if you <ref></ref>ed it at the table header for "Prime Minister", and then had another column of references for each individual PM.
- What source would you want for each PM? The source already listed has all of the dates in it, and it is as reliable a source as we could ever find, being the official record-keeper of Parliament.
  - I don't know. Newspaper articles, journals, History Channel documentaries, books, etc etc. -- Matthew | talk | Contribs 08:43, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - I'm not sure I understand the need for backup sources. In any case, newspapers et alii would likely have gotten their information from the Library of Parliament anyway, why not just avoid the hearsay? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 08:48, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      - Well, if no other reviewers bring it up, I'm happy to concede. -- Matthew | talk | Contribs 05:55, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral for now at least, until all the other issues raised by other reviewers have been addressed. -- Matthew | talk | Contribs 21:13, 16 March 2008 (UTC) Comments of The Rambling Man (talk) 11:01, 1 March 2008 (UTC):[reply]

Year ranges should use the en-dash to separate.
- Done Changed. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:16, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
References/notes should not have a space before them.
- Done Spaces removed. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:16, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"While popular prime ministers" - popular is redundant here - unpopular prime ministers can still be re-elected.
- Done Rephrased. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 01:23, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why aren't all headings in the table initially capitalised like Rank?
- Done Caps added. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:16, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
" As per the Library of Parliament" - this should be explained.
- Done Line rewritten. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 05:09, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure the "by time in office" is needed - we've got sortable tables now so you could just axe that and aim for a simple chronological list which could be sorted by duration in office. That makes the list a lot more flexible.
- That doesn't help in this case, since many of them served nonconsecutive terms. A separate list of total time in office, which this article does, is needed for those matters. --Golbez (talk) 18:21, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Okay. Fair enough but what is the significance of "...by time in office" as opposed to any other criterion? I'm not sure we need this particular article at all! The Rambling Man (talk) 18:29, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - We have them for many other offices, so there's precedent. I rather like the ones for US Presidents and VPs. --Golbez (talk) 18:41, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      - Hmm. WP:ILIKEIT? I believe in the past a large number of lists were created because of a lack of sortability. These lists are now subject to merging with main lists. There must be a better way than to have main lists and then simply reordering them for "by time in office". The Rambling Man (talk) 19:12, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        There is, which is why the earlier linked VP list has value added stuff like the amount of time in office and other notes. Those would be extraneous in a normal list of office holders. --Golbez (talk) 21:07, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        
        For heads of government there are usualy many lists sorting them in different ways, by time in office, by religion, etcetera. The main list would be huge if we included them all there; this way keeps each table tidy. The other advantage is that this list has some useful prose at the top about PM term lengths, so that anyone specificly interested in how long each PM served as all the info they need right here, conviniently organized. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:03, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        
        How about if I turned the "mandates" row into prose, like "served served two short terms in minority parliaments" for Pearson? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:19, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        Done; it now has value-added information about each PM's terms. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 05:09, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So I have to oppose at the moment, quite a few things that need to be resolved. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:01, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

comment 'prime minister' and 'incumbancy' columns should be sortable to improve the use of this table for the reader. Hmains (talk) 18:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
comment - the "rank" column switches from right-indented (1-9) to left-indented (10-22). Consider splitting the "Mandates" column into two columns, "number of mandates" and "remarks", and making it sortable on "number of mandates".--EdgeNavidad (talk) 17:32, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I'll get to both points about sortable tables when I can get my hands on a different computer tomorrow, as sortable tables don't seem to work well in my browser (Firefox for Mac). How do you think I can make the column with date ranges usefully sortable? The sorting function seems to work with one date, but I doubt it would work with several in the same cell. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 18:08, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.