Talk:2022 Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council election

Analysis

Hi @Andrew.smithh: I'm afraid that all of the text in the section you've added is your interpretation and analysis! You're interpreting election results (which you also shouldn't be sourcing from Wikipedia). We can include interpretation of election results and coverage of which wards will be competitive, but it needs to be drawn from reliable sources. I've included material about which wards are likely to be competitive in at least one other council election article for this year because a local newspaper explicitly discussed them: even then, as it's a subjective assessment, I've attributed it. An encyclopedia isn't the kind of place for editors to add their own assessments and interpretations, it's a place to summarise what reliable sources are saying. The material you have added is more suitable for a blog than Wikipedia. If you can find reliable sources, like books and newspapers, that provide similar analysis then it would be great to include some summaries in the article. I'm also going to point you to MOS:HEADCAPS: section titles and table headings should be formatted in sentence case. I hope that helps! Ralbegen (talk) 16:07, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi Ralbegen. So delete the part of the text that is analysis - the final sentence I agree is analysis, but I think most of the rest is probably not. The main table however is simply taking the ward by ward results in 2018 and presenting them in a different way - there is ZERO analysis in presenting numbers in a different way. Just because it is different to what you normally see at a local level (it's clearly common at a national political level), does NOT mean that it is "analysis or synthesis". Andrew.smithh (talk) 09:52, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

The part of Hammersmith and Fulham has historically been one of the most competitive boroughs in London, with political control changing hands been the Labour Party and the Conservative Party twice in the past four elections. The competitive nature of the borough is also illustrated by the fact that in 11 of the past 15 elections (since 1968) at least one ward has been represented by councillors from different parties that I think could be included without additional supporting references: Hammersmith and Fulham changed control between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party twice since 2006. I've included something similar in the background section: a statement of verifiable fact, even without being directly supported by a reference. It's so straightforward that you could find a reference that would say the same thing. Whereas has historically been one of the most competitive boroughs in London needs supporting, and the second sentence is making an argument by drawing together several different figures in a non-routine way. It doesn't entirely make sense, either, because a council can have competitive seats without having competitive control!

Conservative Targets: Labour gained three wards at the 2018 election with a margin of less than 400 votes - these are vulnerable to a reasonable swing. isn't encyclopedic style. The middle clause, if there's a third party reliable source that makes the point, could be good in the background section, maybe as In three of the wards where Labour gained seats, their worst-performing candidate had a lead of less than 400 votes over the next candidate to be unambiguous. The addendum these are vulnerable to a reasonable swing is analysis. If a newspaper said something like that I'd want to include it, but attributed: Tom Smith in The Newspaper wrote that those seats would be vulnerable to being taken back by the Conservatives. I don't think there is a source that covers that, though. The next paragraph is very similar, and you've conceded the final one is analysis.

The table, and most of the text, are also made pretty useless to the reader considering that most, if not all, of the wards will not exist at the election! There's a question of due weight as to how much text we should have covering the previous election as background to this one. When I wrote the background section, I included In the most recent election in 2018, Labour extended their majority to 35 seats with 52.0% of the vote, while the Conservatives won 11 seats with 34.7% of the vote. The Liberal Democrats received 11.2% of the vote across the borough but won no seats. Part of my motivation is that I'm keen for as much as possible that's covered in the infobox to be included in the body of the article. Maybe a bit more detail wouldn't be inappropriate, focused on what reporting of the 2018 election emphasises. But not too much more: if readers want to find out more about the 2018 election, they can read about it in the dedicated 2018 Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council election article! We don't need a big summary table of the previous election results. Just because the table you added takes the ward by ward results in 2018 and present[s] them in a different way, doesn't mean it's appropriate to include. A user could add a big table of all the Liberal Democrat results to the article and say the same thing, which would clearly not improve the article. It might be suitable for a Hammersmith Liberal Democrats blogpost, but not an encyclopedia! Sorry to be so thorough, I'm not sure how else I can make the point. Ralbegen (talk) 12:30, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi Ralbegen. This type of condescension and the deletion of other people's work (rather than amending) is what puts people off contributing to Wikipedia. Andrew.smithh (talk) 18:27, 2 April 2022 (UTC)