Talk:Adur District Council elections

Lancing Parish by-election and Manor by-election party

I have reverted a couple of times attempts by unregistered editors to add a parish by-election to this page. The page is clearly about the District Council not the 2 parish councils in Adur so these by-elections (along with being at too low a level to be notable for wikipedia) are out of scope for this page. No other page on local elections in England includes such parish by-elections.

Secondly the same unregistered editors keep amending the candidates on the Marine by-election from 2005 from independent to Shoreham Beach Residents Association. The source from Adur council themselves clearly says independent not the Residents Association and we need to follow the reliable sources.

I am going to revert again now and would ask that it be discussed here, rather than be blindly reverted without explanation. Davewild (talk) 17:36, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks you for replying. I am opposed to including a parish by-election in the middle of district council by-elections giving a very misleading impression that this is another district by-election and making the parish by-election seem as important as the district by-elections. If you want to try and create a page on the parish council then that could be relevant for that page but not for a page on the elections to the district council. If you check any other page on local elections in the UK you will find that none of them include parish by-elections because quite simply they are not as important and they are not what these pages on district, borough, county and metropolitan elections are about.

Secondly the council page on the by-election - http://www.adur.gov.uk/docs/elections/2005-may/election-results-2005-05-05-adc-marine-ward.pdf - makes no mention at all of Keith Fayers-Morrisey being Shoreham Beach Residents Association at the time of the by-election. Could you point to where on the council website (or indeed on the Shoreham Beach Residents Association website) it says that Keith Fayers-Morrisey stood in that by-election for the Shoreham Beach Residents Association. I cannot find anywhere on the council website any mention of Keith Fayers-Morrisey apart from in the by-election result. The only mention of Keith Fayers-Morrisey on the Shoreham Beach Residents Association website I can find is that he is as of now currently treasurer of the association with no mention of him previously being a councillor for the association.

The core Wikipedia policy is Wikipedia:Verifiability, which I suggest you have a look at. This includes the principle of "verifiability, not truth". Unless you produce reliable sources showing that Keith Fayers-Morrisey was standing in the by-election for the Shoreham Beach Residents Association, we have to follow the sources such as here and here that describe him as an independent. Davewild (talk) 18:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

In view of the above reasons and no response I have reverted the addition of parish by-elections and the change of party to Shoreham Beach Residents Association. Davewild (talk) 18:57, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the statements made by Davewild. This article, as with all other articles entitled "xx local elections", is purely about the district borough council (UA or county council in some other cases) and therefore cannot contain information on parish elections. We can also apply the policy WP:NOT#STATS, which limits the excessive use of statistics - parish by-election summaries add nothing to an article on a district borough. Also the notability guideline of WP:GEOSCOPE states that "Notable events usually have significant impact over a wide region, domain, or widespread societal group" or have "a demonstrable long-term impact", which a parish council by-election cannot be argued to have. But district borough elections have proved this notability, please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tamworth Council election, 2008.

In response to the affiliation of a candidate, as Davewild says, we only use information that is verifiable and in this case the verifiable source states that at the time of the election the candidate was an independent, therefore is described as such in the by-election coverage. They may have sat in the RA group on the council, but this might have come after a mid-term defection - all we know is that they were elected as an independent.

An ip has undone Davewild's reversion, therefore includes these erroneous stats and labels. I will revert this based on my above discussion. Zangar (talk) 11:55, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I am here as an independent, neutral observer.

From what I can gather, there are two isses - the addition of a parish council election, and the designation of a specific candiate.

This article is headed "Adur local elections". In another comparable article, Preston local elections, the content considers only borough/district polls. Parish level elections are not included. This does not mean they cannot (Wiki is built on consensus, after all). However, the fact that Parish elections have not been included there or on any other comparable page, never mind this one, suggests that their inclusion is not appriciated, nor encouraged.

Further, Parish Councils do not have much coverage here, and certainly should not attract edit wards because of their small size and limited audience.

I suggest that the Parish result is NOT included here, OR, if it must, is added to a separate section clearly headed.

The ballot paper description of a candidate can be found, very clearly, by asking the electoral office of the council.

I suggest the council is asked to supply the SOPN.

Hope this helps doktorb _words^deeds 13:27, 31 August 2011 (UTC)