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Before the discussion above re Andrew Teale's blog gets sidetracked, I think it best to open a separate discussion on the general principle of LA by-elections and leave the details of how it is cited to that discussion.

It seems to me that council by-elections fail WP:INDISCRIMINATE (aka WP:NOTDATABASE). Unless a by-election has the effect of changing control of the council, why does it matter? And generally the data doesn't get maintained. (Yes, once in a while a dedicated individual like Alextheconservative does the Labours of Hercules but it doesn't last: there are too many to do and if it weren't for other dedicated individuals like Andrew Teale, the work involved would be unconscionable.) If we take the long view, these events really are insignificant: party leaders fall on their swords when the party gets trounced in the major round of council elections but nobody really notices a LA by-election decided by a risible turnout. The fact that it so difficult to cite a news organisation speaks volumes. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:08, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that the fact that data is not maintained is a point against its inclusion. As an example, take the pages on select committees; party affiliation, membership, and leadership quite often lags weeks if not months behind the facts (up 18 December, Julian Knight was still listed as a Select Committee chair at Template:UKParliamentCommitteeChairs).

For your point about their importance, I agree that they are usually unimportant affairs, which is why they're listed in the relevant "[authority] elections" section rather than having their own page, like the elections themselves or parliamentary by-elections. Most individual local elections themselves lead to little or no change; for the past 13 years, Barking and Dagenham has returned the same result (51 Labour councillors), but each of those elections has their own page.

Alextheconservative (talk) 17:38, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, when I think about the sheer amount of effort I put in, for years, compiling all these results for Wikipedia, I'll happily AfD everything if the mood now is that they're all non-notable. Wikipedia should be a record of facts, even if the council didn't change hands. If we're now saying that election results fail GNG, then I'm just going to delete everything I've ever done. What's the point. What's the point of doing so much for so little thanks? doktorb _words^deeds 22:56, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the regular elections for local authorities get pages (as they routinely do, with a well-established set of templates), then we're missing a trick if we arbitrarily say that those are notable but by-elections aren't. I agree the by-elections are seldom of huge interest, but where a council composition changes as a result of by-elections we ought to try and keep the resultant standing of the parties up to date, accepting there will always be a bit of a lag. When it comes to writing up the election results for the next regular elections, it's helpful to know the standing immediately beforehand as well as at the previous election, and having decent records of by-elections can help pinpoint when changes to/from no overall control actually happened between elections.

Local media has been in decline and so in some areas reporting other than by the councils themselves is patchy, and councils have an infuriating habit of deleting old results pages fairly shortly afterwards. That said, as well as Andrew Teale / Local Elections Archive Project, I regularly use Local Councils by consultants Thorncliffe: their weekly updates by David Boothroyd are a pretty good record for by-elections / changes of allegiance. Stortford (talk) 18:30, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm not really seeing an issue here. As far as I'm aware, local by-elections don't get their own pages, and are instead listed in the aftermath section of the regular election article. Also a bit confused about the data not being maintained point. Once the by-election has happened and the results published, what is there to maintain? The figures aren't subsequently updated. Number 57 19:29, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't think anyone's suggesting that local by-elections get their own pages (and I wouldn't support that if it were the suggestion), but the suggestion seems to be to ignore the by-elections which at the moment generally get listed at the end of the page for the preceding regular election, which I think is perfectly sensible and should continue. Apologies if I've misunderstood what @JMF was saying. Stortford (talk) 19:43, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  You've made a good point about the collapse of local newspapers being an issue. We need citations but if Reach has its way, we won't have any. Something to consider. doktorb _words^deeds 20:09, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  My concern was that it takes a lot of work (that is only going to get harder) to do these, so it would be a real pity if they were to be deleted as WP:NOTDATABASE violations at some future date. So if we establish a consensus now that they are worth having, then that at least is a first line of defence. It seems clear from the foregoing that this is indeed the consensus. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 00:55, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Something has pinged into my head and I'll get it down now as a suggestion. When I wanted to create articles for Lancashire County Council elections, even I knew that listing every single result for every single division with every single name might open opposition. My solution was just to do summary results instead. Another editor took offence and there was some edit warring. I wonder if this could be a workable compromise for the larger authorities, showing that we accept annual results as valid but not perhaps with every single candidate listed in full. My Wiki instincts are also looking at OTHERSTUFFEXISTS but I do wonder if we can look at how far down USA election results are compiled here? doktorb _words^deeds 07:50, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Just to jump in here, but state legislative special elections in the US are generally listed on the overall page for state legislative elections that year, like here, or in some cases have their own page, like in New Hampshire this session, if there's a particularly large focus. The latter is definitely more rare from what I can see, though. AnOpenBook (talk) 15:16, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for input at this RFC which concerns England, Great Britain & the United Kingdom. GoodDay (talk) 22:42, 13 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is a bit tangential, but do we have data on the current constituency boundaries? We've got some nice graphics, but do we have coordinates describing constituencies? What I was actually thinking of was centroids for each constituency, either population-weighted or just geographic. Thanks. Bondegezou (talk) 15:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if you're interested in the past constituency boundaries or the newly proposed ones (or even if this is the necessary format), but GIS files for the former can be found here: https://www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/?q=boundary-maps/data-files and geospatial data files for the latter can be found here: https://boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/2023-review/ Hope this helps! AnOpenBook (talk) 03:27, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's fantastic - thanks! Bondegezou (talk) 14:47, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a discussion at Template talk:Infobox officeholder#Template-protected edit request on 1 March 2024 which is relevant to this project. PamD 08:09, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, not entirely sure how to go about this as brand new in this Wikiproject.

I put some work into Abbey (Lincoln ward) in order to get it more in line with a Start article. Wondering if some folks could take a look. K Stockwell (talk) 00:19, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]