Talk:1990 Ontario general election

Defeated candidates

I've removed the redlinks to most of the defeated candidates because it is unlikely that anyone will ever write articles for these people.¹ If they do, they will likely be aware that there is a candidate list here, and will come in to put in a link. In the absence of articles being written about the candidates, what is more likely to happen is that someone will write an article about a US state senator, or an English footballer, or an Australian crocodile wrestler of the same name, and then we'll have a faulty link.

I have left in links to:

• candidates for whom there is already an article,
• to defeated members of the previous legislature on the basis that someone may come back some day to write articles about all former MPPS,
• to a few others who seem possible candidates for articles, and
• to those for whom someone has bothered to put in a disambiguation tag.

¹ For example, I was the campaign manager for a PC candidate in this election (it was a long time ago) who came third with a respectable 22% of the vote, and I can't be bothered to write an article about him. I've never heard of him since, and I can't imagine that anyone else is going to take the time to wite about him. I ust admit that I came this close > < to not voting for him myself.

Kevintoronto 18:21, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Kevin,

With respect, I'm going to have to disagree with this judgement call.

I've started to create "list pages" for a number of fringe party candidates in the 2003 Ontario election, and I'm pondering the option of doing the same for earlier cycles as well (and for major parties). Keeping the redlinks active would be useful to this end.

Some of these candidates have campaigned in multiple elections, meaning that their redlinks from earlier cycles can be useful as instant connectors, when the list articles are written [Nunzio Venuto, from this list, is one such example]. Beyond which, there are a number of major-party candidates that have gone on to successful runs after an initial losing campaign -- keeping the redlinks active is also useful for such people.

Given that the redlinks already exist, it seems more reasonable to keep them than to fill them in individually, as the need emerges.

As to the second point (ie. the possibility of misdirects), there is a solution here as well: I *regularly* go over these pages to correct any such developments. I can vouch that, as of last night, there were *no* misdirects on any of the Ontario pages from 1990 to 2003: every blue link on these pages led exactly where it should lead.

I understand where you're coming from on this, but my view is that the change (i) is unnecessary, and (ii) could be an inconvenience for future plans that I have for these pages.

I'm going to revert the page, as such. No personal disrespect is intended. CJCurrie 20:32, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No offence taken. I made a point of making this change separately from revising the table to facilitate a clean revert if necessary.

I still urge you not to do it. To start with, there is such a very large number of these redlinks. I wish you luck in creating candidates pages for previous elections, but I wonder where you will find useful information on these people. Also, you, like me, have a bent toward the fringe parties. Who will write the articles on the lsoing PC/L/NDP candidates?

Again, I believe that as an article or section is being created for a particular person, it is easy enough to go back and restore the link on each election page. This is what I've been doing in biography and history articles as I've been creating provincial elections pages for BC, Alberta, Sask and Ontario. Most of those articles were written with no links to the then-non-existent elections pages, so I have gone in and put the links in. That process also gave me an opportunity to copyedit the articles as I went, improving the writing style.

I do believe that redlinks detract from articles and should be avoided except where one is relatively certain that one will be writing an article on the person. I am also concerned that someday you may not been around to clean house every so often, and then we will end up with the faulty link problem.

I hope that you will reconsider reverting. Kevintoronto 20:46, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Obviously, I didn't receive this letter until after the revert had been made.

I *could* simply add blue-links on an as-required basis, if this is the general consensu, but my feeling is that it's simply more convenient to keep the redlinks active, in the anticipation of valid links appearing in the future.

Responding to specific concerns:

So far, for the 2003 election, I've created list pages for the Libertarian and Communist candidates. I did this because they were the easiest parties to summarize -- they only ran eleven candidates between them, and writing the lists didn't take very much time. My plan is to gradually move up the list, dealing with parties that ran larger numbers of candidates, and eventually tackle the unsuccessful candidates of major parties. I may never complete this project, of course, but it's not inconceivable that I could successfully create list pages covering *some* candidates of each party -- and, here, it's simply more convenient to keep the existing redlinks in place.

It's also possible that other Wikipedia editors will eventually appear with an interest in this subject, and a willingness to create list pages for marginal figures. Leaving the redlinks intact could be convenient here, as well.

Finally ... if we're ever in a position where *no one* is watching over these pages for misdirects, then it may be appropriate to remove the redlinks. Until such time, however, I don't see this as a compelling reason to change the existing system.

I'll leave it to your discretion as to whether or not the page should be reverted again. CJCurrie 20:59, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm not in a hurry to revert the page. I'd rather sort it out with you and perhaps others first. I slept on the issue because I don't want to hinder your work in any way. There are enough people here preventing work from being done - vandals, POV pushers, deletionists, Michaelm - that I don't want to slow things down for you.

On the other hand, I don't agree with the idea that we should leave the redlinks in because "It's also possible that other Wikipedia editors will eventually appear with an interest in this subject, and a willingness to create list pages for marginal figures." That, unfortunately, is a recipe for articles full of redlinks. I admire the work that you are doing on defeated candidates, but you are special, CJ. I don't think we can assume that someone else is going to grasp the torch should it fall from your failing hand.

I tried to find something in the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(links) about redlinks, but this is all that I could find:

• On the other hand, do not make too many links. An article may be considered overlinked if any of the following is true:
  • 10% of the words are contained in links
  • it has more links than lines
  • link is repeated within the same screen (40 lines perhaps) more than 10% of the links are to articles that don't exist.
  • low added value links (e.g. such as year links 1995, 1980s) are duplicated

The only thing that seems to qualify here is that more than 10% of the words are contained in links, but I don't think that would really apply in the case of a list. Indeed, if there were articles for all of these people, I don't think there should be any problem about exceeding that rule.

I can see that creating articles on candidates on for the most recent elections and those going forward as being a project that could reasonably be expected to be accomplished, but going back 15 years or more? I don't know if that is realistic. Of course, if you tell me that that is your plan, I wouldn't want to get in the way of it.

Perhaps, however, candidates in elections prior to a certain date should be left out until your get further along in your project.

I would expect, howver, that you would continue with the format of making one article for all of a party's defeated candidates, rather than individual article that would be suseptible to VfDs. In which case, would it not make sense to start making the links in that format, i.e., [[Libertarian candidates, 1990 Ontario election#CJ Currie]] rather than relying on a redirect and risking a misdirect? (As an aside, I once followed a link from a Kevin Richardson who ran for Mayor of Toronto in 2000 to find myself in an article about Kevin Richardson, the Backstreet Boy.)

I agree with you that it makes more sense if we're going to do a consultation to do it by invitation, at least at first. I would also suggest trying to avoid an open vote as I attempted with the elections chart thing. Sock puppeteers will get smarter over time. Regards, Kevintoronto 13:07, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Just a quick response for the moment ...

Having also slept on the matter, I'm not quite as averse to the prospect of eliminating the redlinks as I was yesterday. If the general consensus is to move in that direction, I won't object.

Alternately, the idea of creating more blue links *now* (eg. for 1990 Libertarian candidates, and others), and filling in the details later would make sense as a viable compromise. I'd planned on creating list pages in a more methodical, detail-heavy sort of way, but creating them as skeletons could be advantageous as well. Perhaps I'll start on this in a few days ...

(Incidentally, part of the reason why I objected yesterday was from surprise that the issue would be brought up at this stage. I created numerous redlink-filled articles for Manitoba elections last year, and no-one has yet raised any criticism.) CJCurrie 00:17, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I will be patient. I am not looking for a quick resolution to this, but rather one that everyone is happy with. While the elections charts thing was painful at the time, when I finally began making the changes per the consensus, I was worried that people might start reverting right away. This hasn't happened, so it looks like we have a standard that will survive for at least a while.

I only did the redlinks on the Ont 1990 page because I happened to be there revising the table. If my changes had gone without comments, I suppose I eventually would have got to the Manitoba pages when I revised those tables. Similarly, when I emptied a couple of Ottawa municipal elections pages of redlinks a few months ago, no-one complained. While it ould be nice to have articles on mayors of Ottawa and Bytown back to when it was Bytown, I don't expect that's likely to happen. Smae for defeated aldermanic cnadidates from the 1980s.

I don't if it helps the reader to create a bluelink to a page that has no info on the person, but just a space for info. Its kind of like the flyers that are distributed for condo developments that feature a website address when the website only provides a pdf of the flyer. I've encountered this several times. But that is neither here nor there. Let's continue to think and talk about this before we invite other politicos to join the discussion. Regards, Kevintoronto 13:30, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)