Talk:Popular election

Not a redirect

"Popular election" does not necessarily mean "direct election". That is why it is a disambiguation page. If the wording of one or more entries is "confusing", then improve that. But making it a redirect to one of its multiple meanings is worse than confusing; in many cases it is plain wrong. jnestorius^(talk) 09:37, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Regarding "what evidence is there of a lack of primary topic to the term [popular vote]?" many of Special:WhatLinksHere/Popular vote are US election articles, which are more likely to be "Popular vote, in an indirect election, is the number votes received in the first-phase election (if this is by universal suffrage) as opposed to the final election". jnestorius^(talk) 09:51, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

@Jnestorius: This isn't a dab page. A dab page is meant to be a quick navigation aid, not a smorgasbord of meanings. Per MOS:DAB, the term "popular election" should be at least part of the title or mentioned prominently in the linked article. If you'd like to turn it into an article about what "popular election" means, that would be great. It would certainly help me! I tried hard to find a definition for "popular election" online, but surprisingly, failed miserably. I did go through all of the articles that linked here to be sure that the redirect would be okay, and fixed those that weren't. — Gorthian (talk) 16:33, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

How did you arrive at this page? Did you type "popular election" in the search-box or did you click on a link? jnestorius^(talk) 20:01, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

jnestorius: Well, neither. I sort of specialize in disambiguation pages; I got here because popular election was on a list of dab pages with lots of incoming links (they should have none), at WP:DPL. So I checked it out. BTW, I wasn't the one who disputed your edit in September. — Gorthian (talk) 22:52, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

OK, how about this:

• move the dab content from Popular election to Popular vote, which currently redirects here
• Make Popular election redirect to Direct election
• Add a hatnote to Direct election: {{Redirect|Popular election||Popular vote}}

jnestorius^(talk) 12:07, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

@Jnestorius: Say I'm a user trying to figure out the term "popular election". I put that in the search box and end up here. NONE of the entries on this page have the words "popular election" in its title, so I end up frustrated and no wiser than I was. That's why there needs to be a broad-concept article here, to explain at least the very basics of what the term means or could mean. It could be just a stub, and it would be much more helpful than what's here now. (The same problem exists for "popular vote"—none of the articles have that term in its title, either.) — Gorthian (talk) 18:29, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

You seem to believe that every entry on Foo (disambiguation) should be of the form Foo (qualifier). This is not so; WP:SYNONYM applies. If your hypothetical user doesn't know what "popular election" means but does know what "universal suffrage" means, the fact that the phrase "universal suffrage" does not contain the words "popular" or "election" is not a problem. If they don't know what "universal suffrage" is, then they can click the universal suffrage article to see if it's relevant. I don't see the frustration. Do you envisage that a user reading universal suffrage will hit CTRL+F to search for "popular election", and stop confused when they find no matches? jnestorius^(talk) 10:28, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Jnestorius, the guideline is clear: "Include articles only if the term being disambiguated is actually described in the target article." There is also this: "If the primary meaning of a term proposed for disambiguation is a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article, and a substantial portion of the links asserted to be ambiguous are instances or examples of that concept or type, then the page located at that title should be an article describing it, and not a disambiguation page." (emphasis mine)

As for the hypothetical user, I am that user. I went to every one of those articles and I still don't understand the nuances of "popular election". Obviously, you do. Would you be willing to actually summarize all that you're trying to do with "disambiguation" links and actually write an article? Then other articles can link the term "popular election", knowing there is an article there that will explain the different meanings and ways it is used. It would be a service to the encyclopedia. — Gorthian (talk) 18:35, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "the nuances of 'popular election'". Are you suggesting that each entry in the current DAB list is a separate "nuance" of a single overarching meaning? That is not the case. They are separate meanings. Treat them as totally unrelated. If you want to find out more about the first entry, just click "universal suffrage". It is indeed the case that "the term being disambiguated is actually described in the target article."? The entire article is about "popular election", because "popular election" and "universal suffrage" are synonyms. They mean the same thing. The "broad concept" article that covers all the different meanings on the DAB would simply be voting. An article that covers all the meanings and nothing else would violate WP:SYN. Compare the daddy longlegs DAB list. The entries Opiliones, Pholcidae, and Crane fly all refer to long-legged arthropods, but there is no point in creating a "broad concept" article covering that. Simply grouping them under a "Biology" heading on the DAB page is all the connection that needs to be highlighted. (Likewise, if there were songs and films called "Popular Election" to add to this DAB, then the existing ones would be grouped under a "Voting" header.) jnestorius^(talk) 09:06, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

@Jnestorius: From what you say, it's clear that "popular election" has more than one meaning. All I'm saying is that there should be an article here explaining those meanings. If you still disagree with that idea, I think an RFC is the way to go. — Gorthian (talk) 19:53, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

I still disagree. If the existing explanations are not clear to you, maybe each can be improved by rewording; but major expansion would make it harder for a reader to zoom in on the one meaning they are interested in. No objections from me to an RFC. jnestorius^(talk) 23:32, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguation issues

This has caused new disambiguation issues in several articles, I have found. For example, Canadian elections (federal and provincial) are indirect elections - we vote for a representative for our riding and the winning party is the one with the most elected members - but several articles also refer to the term "popular vote" to talk about how the overall voting went. I don't what article to use to disambiguate the term Popular vote; none of the alternatives in this dab page seem to make sense for this situation. Suggestions? PKT(alk) 17:44, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

@PKT: I think this needs to be an article, as it's definitely not a decent dab page. See above. — Gorthian (talk) 18:29, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

@PKT: Can you give an example article? jnestorius^(talk) 10:28, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Sure: Brian Mulroney, Canadian federal election, 2015, Kathleen Wynne, New Brunswick general election, 1974, Politics of British Columbia and there are 9 others on the list I'm looking at for WikiProject Canada. Similarly, there may be as many as 45 USA articles using the term "popular vote", according to the list at http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_United_States . PKT(alk) 11:03, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

I've added "Popular vote, in representative democracy, is the number of votes received by a party or group of candidates, as opposed to the number of seats it wins in the representative assembly" jnestorius^(talk) 11:59, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

To be honest, I still have a concern here. Several articles link the term "popular vote" in the manner referred to above, and those articles link to this "Popular election" article. I don't think a casual user looking for meaning for "popular vote" will get the information they seek from this article/page, as it currently stands. I will be interested to read the opinions of other editors about this. PKT(alk) 22:19, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

RFC: what sort of page should this be?

Should Popular election be an article, a disambiguation page, or a redirect? — Gorthian (talk) 21:14, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

This question follows from the discussion at #Not a redirect (above). — Gorthian (talk) 21:19, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Brief history of the page:

• 30 October 2008 – Jnestorius created the page as a redirect to universal suffrage
• 8 September 2016 – Jnestorius created a dab page
• 17 October 2016 – Gorthian changed the dab into a redirect to direct election
• 18 October 2016 – Jnestorius reverted to the dab page and started discussion
• 20 October 2016 – Gorthian added {{dabconcept}}
• 2 November 2016 – Swpb removed {{dabconcept}}

— Gorthian (talk) 21:41, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Opinions

• A disambiguation page, because the term has multiple meanings. If someone wishes to create an article called 'popular election' and then list the article to this disambiguation page, that is alright.CuriousMind01 (talk) 13:06, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

• My justification for removing {{dabconcept}} was: "These entries really aren't related by enough unique content to make a BCA; a dab is probably the right answer". To expand on that, it appears there is little to say about "popular election" that relates these different meanings and that is not already said at Election. The entries are not really "examples of a concept or type" as suggested in WP:CONCEPTDAB; they are different uses of a term, as in a typical dab. jnestorius also made similar points in the previous discussion. —swpb^T 15:54, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

• Disambiguation - but - I'd think a redirect and that page have a topline pointing to 'Popular election (disambiguation)', except that on looking I see it's a mess and really disambiguation seems better for this:

1. Mistitled - far more WP:COMMONNAME is 'Popular vote' - google got 1M hits and 'Popular election' only got 319 thousand and 'Direct election' 399 thousand.
2. No strong association - only 20 out of the 319 thousand 'Popular election' hits also said 'direct election'. So I think it's a significant number but not dominant enough to get a redirect.
3. Significant other meanings -- there is Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and to be international the Australian and UK has different common usages than the US
4. Missing Scholarly meaning - I've not seen a cite to a consensus in Political Science, if there is one. Frankly reading Voting Systems just tells me it's complicated and lots of various labels & multiple meanings ...
5. Plain English - and just looking at the hits I also see plenty of it's being used not as a technical term but as an adjective, as in 'this is my least popular election' and 'buttons are popular election souvenirs'

Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:44, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

• A disambiguation page. A simple re-direct would be too presumptuous about all the possible different topics someone might be looking for with the terminology. Invited to comment by Legobot. Peter S Strempel | Talk 12:41, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

• Both. A disambugiation page and an article. _{Adotchar| reply here} 21:31, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
  • Adotchar, that doesn't really help. It can't be both. — Gorthian (talk) 02:49, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
    • Popular Election (Disambiguation) and Popular Election. _{Adotchar| reply here} 13:38, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

• Disambig - BUT it might have potential as Popular vote vs electoral college. ^{Atsme📞📧} 12:27, 22 November 2016 (UTC)