Category talk:Parliamentary constituencies in the Republic of Ireland

message: I have requested moves for the articles listed in in the table below.  The purpose of the move is clarity and consistency. 
They are all constituencies for elections to Dáil Éireann (the Irish parliament), and I am tryin  to convert their names across to the format "xxx (Dáil Éireann constituency)".  AS you will see from the :Category:Parliamentary constituencies in the Republic of Ireland, about half are already done, and all of the defunct constituencies in :Category:Parliamentary (Dáil Éireann) constituencies in Ireland (historic) had been done before I started work.
In each case, the move is blocked by a redirect at the place I want to move the article to, which is why I need an admin's help. I hope the table is self-explanatory.  (BTW, note the accents in the names: it's important that those are retained).
A term such as "Carlow-Kilkenny" could easily be used to refer to any number of things spanning the two counties, and the name gives little clue as to the content of the article, except to those who already know.
Even names such as "Clare (constituency)" are less than informative, because they could refer to the former UK Parliament constituencies in Ireland (from 1901-1922).  Those constituencies have all been named in the format "xxx (UK Parliament constituency)" (see e.g. :Category:Historic parliamentary constituencies in Ireland).
old name                	new name
Carlow-Kilkenny         	Carlow–Kilkenny (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Cavan (constituency)    	Cavan (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Cavan-Monaghan          	Cavan–Monaghan (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Clare (constituency)    	Clare (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Dublin North            	Dublin North (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Dublin West             	Dublin West (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Galway East             	Galway East (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Galway West             	Galway West (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Kerry North             	Kerry North (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Kerry South             	Kerry South (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Kildare North           	Kildare North (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Kildare South           	Kildare South (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Laois-Offaly            	Laois–Offaly (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Limerick East           	Limerick East (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Limerick West           	Limerick West (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Longford-Roscommon      	Longford–Roscommon (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Longford-Westmeath      	Longford–Westmeath (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Louth (constituency)    	Louth (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Mayo (constituency)     	Mayo (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Meath (constituency)    	Meath (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Meath East              	Meath East (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Meath West              	Meath West (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Tipperary North         	Tipperary North (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Tipperary South         	Tipperary South (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Waterford (constituency)	Waterford (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Westmeath (constituency)	Westmeath (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Wexford (constituency)  	Wexford (Dáil Éireann constituency)
Wicklow (constituency)  	Wicklow (Dáil Éireann constituency)
--BrownHairedGirl 16:07, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Requested Moves

message: First, a little background on how it arose.  I have been busy for the last few weeks trying to fill in some of the holes in coverage of members of the Dáil and Seanad, and have been creating new articles (mostly quite stubby) to fill the gaps, as well as categorisng existing articles.  I created the categories for each session, (:Category:Members of the 1st Dáil etc) and have been busy populating them: so far, I have completed the :Category:Members of the 28th Dáil and the :Category:Members of the 29th Dáil, and a look at the others shows several nearly complete (the categories for the 24th-27th Dála all have over 130 entries).
In doing this, I have been checking the electoral history of every TD whose article I have edited, and in most cases adding substantive text about their electoral history as well as categorising them.  That involved editing nearly 400 articles on TDs, (excluding all the dab pages, changes to the election results page due to disambiguation etc), and there are probably another 500 articles to be created as the members of previous Dála get added.
(The reason I mention all this is not to claim a long-service medal or to claim that I have done more than others, but to explain why the issue of the constituency names arose for me, as I tried to build on the huge amount of very careful and detailed work done by others.  In the case of constituencies, User:Gary J in particular laid some very solid foundations.)
:User:Gary J only arrived on the constituency scene in Jan 2006 so there were some conventions in place before that.  Initially, my reaction to his contributions was to raise an eyebrow.  However, I have recently read his comments on here and seen his discussion of the issues and I agree that there are complications.  I like his proposal of putting all incarnations into one article.--Rye1967 18:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Background

message: The sources which I have been using to track individual TDs' electoral histories (the Oireachtas members database and the  ElectionsIreland.org site obviously list the constituency name, but of course do not list the name used in Wikipedia.  The absence of any consistent pattern to the naming makes the job very much more difficult than it need be.
With the constituencies for the current Dáil, the "bare" name (e.g. Dublin South) generally worked OK, but the further back I went, the more unreliable it became.  Many of the constituencies did not exist as articles, and some redirected me to an article on "xxx (UK Parliament constituency)", even for an election who took place after 1922.   I wanted to be able to simply type "xxx something" and know that I would end up at the appropriate page, but that is not currently the case.  There was frequently some burrowing required before I could find whether an article existed or not, and if so what name it had.
:But the ones that didn't exist could be created, and the xxx(UK Parliament constitiuency) arose because of the recent work of GaryJ (in my opinion), for which he is introducing a new approach.  But whatever the background, I agree that it is now inconsistent, frustrating, difficult, and requires lots of 'burrowing'.--Rye1967 18:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Frustrations with current naming practice for Irish constituencies

message: I looked at the :Category:Parliamentary (Dáil Éireann) constituencies in Ireland (historic), and found there the sort of clarity which I had found whilst editing articles on British MPs: a single, consistent, naming format which made life much, much easier than having to dig to find the name.  With UK Parliament constituencies, editing is easy: just type Glossop South-Central (UK Parliament constituency) and you had a direct link to the article, bypassing any redirects.  (Unfortunately, this isn't the case any more, since some folks have recently started undoing this neat and consistent system: the result needs very careful maintenance, such as the huge table of names created by User:Sjorford at User:Sjorford/Constituencies.  That seems to me to be a big step backwards).
The point has been made that this clarity could be achieved by redirects, so that the fictitious Goleen North East (Dáil Éireann constituency) would redirect to wherever was appropriate: to Goleen North East, or Goleen North East (constituency) or whatever.
I see a few problems with that:
a) I dislike unnecessarily relying on redirects.  If I am working on a consistent set of articles, as I tend to do, I prefer in most cases to link directly, e.g, to Goleen North East.  It removes the risk of double redirects if a page is moved, and it looks neater.
Then where will the redirect end up? That creates two further problems:
b) Constituency names, being based on geographical names, stand an inherent risk of being ambiguous if the geographical name alone is used.
c) There are particular problems involved naming the constituencies used in Dáil elections, because of the changes in legal structure.
:OK, so I see the background for your decision, and I too dislike redirects.--Rye1967 18:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Alternatives

message: As I see it, constituencies are NOT geographical entities: they are legal/political entities, created for a particular purpose, usually (but not always) with a geographical location (see the Constituency, especially the second para, which is very good on his point).  The exceptions in 20th-century Ireland are the University constituencies, Dublin University (constituency) and National University of Ireland (constituency), which need special treatment because they moved from being Dáil constituencies to Seanad constituencies.
:Hmm, thats a fair point.--Rye1967 18:49, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, its good to avoid the need for lingering maintenance.--Rye1967 18:49, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Inherent geographical ambiguity

message: There is a further problem here is that we actually have three different types of constituency used in elections to Dáil Éireann.  Leaving aside European Parliament constituencies (whose size removes the possibility of conflict), we have:
;"Type 1" : UK Parliament constituencies, as used for Westminster elections (up to and including 1918)
; "Type 2" : Constituencies used for elections to the Parliament of Southern Ireland, i.e to the 2nd and 3rd Dála, (see Government of Ireland Act 1920 (Parliamentary and Dáil constituencies))
"Type 3" : Constituencies established by the Oireachtas, under the Electoral Act 1923 and subsequent legislation
Unfortunately, there is some overlap in naming between them all.  Mayo East existed from 1918–21 as one of four single-member constituencies in County Mayo established by the UK parliament … but it also existed from 1969–1997 as one of two Dáil Éireann constituencies in the county.  The geographical spread was markedly different (the UK constituency covered about quarter of the county, whereas the Dáil constituency covered half of it), and the electoral arrangements were completely different.  It simply does not make sense to combine these two very different legal entities in one article.  An attempt to do simply makes for a very complicated and confusing article.
So I suggest that for clarity the Type 1 constituencies should all be named as "xxx (UK Parliament constituency)". 
Types 2 and Type 3 constituencies are broadly similar, despite their different parentage: both were designed to use PR-STV in multi-member constituencies to return representatives to an Irish parliament (whether the House of Commons of Southern Ireland or Dáil Éireann).  They were not used in UK-wide elections.  Since the House of Commons of Southern Ireland had such a short and insignificant existence as a parliament, and since no substantive change in logic was used by the Dáil once it legislated alone, I cannot see a case from a 26-county perspective for giving them a separate namespace.
However, from a 32-county perspective, the case may be different, since the Type 2 (1921–1923) constituencies existed on both sides of the border as products of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (see Government of Ireland Act 1920 (Parliamentary and Dáil constituencies).  At the moment, I'm not persuaded that it's worth attributing much significance for these purposes to the House of Commons of Southern Ireland: I just raise it as a concern.
:This point discusses the content of the articles as well as the name.  There are so many complications, it makes my head spin.  While this proposal seems a reasonable division of the content, it is different to what GaryJ is currently implementing, I believe.--Rye1967 18:58, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Types of constituency used in Dáil elections

message: I have added :Category:Historic Westminster constituencies in Ireland and :Category:Historic Westminster constituencies in Northern Ireland.  I didn't find this talk until after I did it, but I have no second thoughts.  I am in the process of moving articles from :Category:United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies (historic), :Category:Historic parliamentary constituencies in Ireland and :Category:History of Ireland 1801-1922 into the 2 new categories.  Any help welcome.
The current structure is now:
:Category:Parliamentary constituencies in Ireland
*:Category:Historic parliamentary constituencies in Ireland
**:Category:Constituencies of the Parliament of Ireland (to 1800)
**:Category:Parliamentary (Dáil Éireann) constituencies in Ireland (historic)
**:Category:Historic Westminster constituencies in Ireland
*** :Category:Historic Westminster constituencies in Northern Ireland
**:Category:Constituencies of the Northern Ireland Parliament
*:Category:Parliamentary constituencies in Northern Ireland
**Category:Historic Westminster constituencies in Northern Ireland
*:Category:Parliamentary constituencies in the Republic of Ireland
**Category:Parliamentary (Dáil Éireann) constituencies in Ireland (historic)
The non-wikified names are duplicate mentions of multi-parented cats.  jnestorius(talk) 18:01, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent changes