Talk:2022 Faroese general election

November 2023

@Number 57: could you help me understand why this page shouldn't have Sjálvstýri in the infobox? If someone reading is doing the math on the seat gains and losses they'll come up with +1 overall, and it seems to me like useful information to know where that seat came from. Furthermore, political parties in the Faroe Islands have been very consistent for the last 25 years, and I would think that someone familiar with Faroese politics would find it useful to have the information about one of the main parties right up front. And given how consistently those have been the only seven parties running, it's pretty far from a situation like in other multiparty systems where deciding which parties to include and exclude has to be done with a degree of arbitrariness.

TL;DR I think it's useful information to include at the top, but I'm happy to hear your reasoning. wherethetacos (talk) 21:29, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Sure – standard practice is not to include parties that didn't win seats in an infobox (I'm sure you'll be able to find a few exceptions, but they are very much that). This particular infobox even used to have a caption stating "This section lists parties that won seats".

The maths argument is a very weak one, because a party may simply cease to exist between elections, and then wouldn't be shown at all. I don't think readers are stupid enough to fail to understand why the sum of seat changes might not be zero. Cheers, Number 57 21:32, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Could you refer me to where the standard practice for this kind of thing is written down? wherethetacos (talk) 21:35, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Standard practice is rarely written down. However, I have thousands of election articles on my watchlist and I can tell you that including parties without seats is done on hardly any of them. See for example 2022 Israeli legislative election (three parties that lost representation), 1998 Faroese general election (two parties), 2005 Danish general election (two parties), 2006 Dutch general election (one party), 2020 Serbian parliamentary election (eight parties), 2020 Croatian parliamentary election (two parties), 2020 Lithuanian parliamentary election (two parties) etc. Number 57 22:24, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Actually, the requirement not to include parties that didn't win seats is included in the infobox documentation, where it states "Rank parties by percentage of vote received, with independents listed last. Do not include parties that did not win seats". Cheers, Number 57 22:33, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for providing me with a link! Much appreciated.

Looking through the documentation history, it seems to me that not including parties that didn't win seats is hardly a long-established guideline. In fact, the line you referenced was added by you just three months ago. I respect your opinion that infoboxes ought not to include this information, but frankly it strikes me as more of a personal preference on your part than any kind of binding precedent.

Even if that's a good rule to follow in most cases, I feel as though I've made a pretty good case for why it's useful to include another party here. I'm happy to discuss that further if you'd like to address it, but if all your reasoning comes down to is a line of documentation you added without any discussion I can see on the talk page, then I'll respectfully disagree with you and restore my contribution. Wherethetacos (talk) 23:10, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

It is a long-established guideline – if you look back at the very earliest versions of the infobox from January 2012, the infobox contains a statement that "The above list contains only the parties which passed the threshold". A form of this note ("This lists parties that won seats.") was in the infobox until May 2023 when it was removed because it contained an internal link (not because there was a change in purpose). I presume I added the note to the documentation shortly after that, so that the requirement not to include seatless parties was still noted somewhere. Number 57 08:31, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

You're right, it seems I was mistaken. Thank you for correcting me.

Nevertheless, guidelines aren't binding and should be ignored when doing so would improve the article. I still contend that, due to the relative stability of the Faroese seven-party system, including all of those seven in the infobox is useful and informative. wherethetacos (talk) 19:35, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

It's a shame that it took three rounds of responses until you believed me, despite me pointing out that the infobox used to contain the statement about only listing parties that won seats in my first response. I hope in future you will take what other editors say in good faith rather than assuming motivations (like personal preferences) on their part.

On the substantive matter, I continue to disagree that it is useful, appropriate or an improvement to show parties that lost seats in the infobox. Cheers, Number 57 21:10, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Can you give some reasoning behind your disagreement? I think I've made a case for it being there, and I'm interested in hearing your thinking beyond just saying that you disagree.

My apologies if referring to personal preference seemed like an assumption of bad faith, my intent was actually exactly the opposite. From my perspective, mistakenly believing you had recently added it, my assumption was that your addition of that documentation and application of it to this page was based on a genuine belief that it was a good and applicable principle. My invocation of the term 'personal preference' was only meant to imply that my disagreement with you came from a corresponding place of good faith, and that we could have an honest difference of opinion; 'interpretation' would have been a more accurate word than 'preference'. Reading my reply again, I can see how my tone may have inadvertently obscured that. My apologies.

However, I don't think it's an accurate characterization to say that it took three rounds of responses for me to believe you. I asked for a link and you gave me one, I followed up on the link and found the edit where I thought the line had originated, you showed me that I had made a mistake and I believed and thanked you. There's no disbelief or presumption of deceit there, just an attempt to find the origin of the guideline and an easily-corrected misunderstanding that you were very helpful with. Please assume good faith on my part too; I wasn't hostilely not believing you, I just misunderstood.

wherethetacos (talk) 21:51, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

In my view, summarising the results of the election means only listing the parties that won seats and are therefore in a position to influence government formation or to demonstrate the relative strength of the opposition. Parties that didn't win seats do not fit into either of these categories. I am also very much in favour of consistency across articles, as my 18 years experience on here has taught me that inconsistency leads to endless arguments that something should be done in one article because it's done on another, rather than all of them being held to the same standard. For example, relaxing this rule could eventually result in someone trying to justify adding eight parties to the 2020 Serbian election infobox, which would clearly be an incredibly unhelpful move.

Regarding the previous comment, sorry if it's coming across as hostile, but unfortunatley I have experienced exactly this type of conversation several times over the years I've been editing, and it has rarely ended well, hence the slight exasperation. It always has the same pattern – question about why something is being done a certain way, response explaining that this is standard practice, demand to know where is this written down, response that that's not how things work but here are numerous examples to demonstrate it's really a thing, still don't believe you/it's your personal preference/attempt at a 'gotcha' etc. Cheers, Number 57 22:17, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree that that is an important function of summarizing election results. In my opinion, an additional function is tracking relative political party strength over time. In a stable party system, that means including all the parties. For instance, someone navigating through multiple successive elections using the previous and next election arrows could find it helpful to be able to easily follow a party's rise and fall, including into and out of extra-parliamentary status. I agree that in many, or even most, cases including parties that don't win seats would detract rather than aid. The 2020 Serbian election is indeed a good example of that. However, in a stable party system, and particularly in a case such as this one where there are only a handful of parties even on the ballot, including all participants would not require doubling the number of parties listed or drawing an arbitrary line about what to include.

Consistency alone strikes me as a weak argument. If there's good reason for something to be included in a certain article, the possibility that it might cause a disagreement on another article is both speculative and irrelevant. Furthermore, the principle I'm arguing for here is a very narrow one that is perfectly able to be applied consistently.

That sounds like a frustrating position to repeatedly find yourself in. However, I think it's important to treat every new interaction as new; just because a previous conversation went down a frustrating path doesn't mean that an editor starting a new one on similar lines shouldn't be granted the assumption of good faith. Anyway, it seems that we just misunderstood each other, and I'm happy to close the book on the confusion and proceed solely on substantive questions.
wherethetacos (words | deeds) 21:08, 5 December 2023 (UTC)