Talk:Electoral district of Dunstan

Merge from electoral district of Norwood

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Happened to notice while perusing the ABC's preview of the 2022 election that it reckons Norwood and Dunstan as the same seat. See here. It tracks election results back to 1970, when the seat was still Norwood. Since it's understood that Dunstan is simply a reconfigured Norwood, it would seem more accurate to merge the two. HangingCurve^{Swing for the fence} 23:42, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose My preference is to keep re-named electorates as separate articles. This is consistently done in the federal division articles (Division of Denison → Division of Clark), but not so consistently in the state districts (Division of Clark (state)). I just think it's cleaner—less awkward mismatched piping ([[Electoral district of Dunstan|Norwood]]), no multiple entries in the infobox Namesake field, and no need to determine an arbitrary threshold of boundary difference for separation/merging (would district articles be merged only if the boundaries are identical? Less than 5% different? 50% different?). I guess I'm also thinking about it from a data/Wikidata standpoint, not everyone's cup of tea of course, but this kind of merge either breaks the link between the Wikidata items and the Wikipedia articles (wikidata:Q5355822 would have no linked article) or if the Wikidata items are merged, they would inaccurately say that Frank Nieass was the member for Dunstan in 1938. --Canley (talk) 01:58, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
  • If the merge would go through, there would be a separate column for when the seat was known as Norwood, Quite a few of the articles for state seats in NSW and WA have a similar setup. They recognize that it's the same seat, just a new name. That would solve the accuracy problem. In my solution, Steven Marshall would be the last name in the column for Norwood, and the first in the column for Dunstan. HangingCurve^{Swing for the fence} 01:26, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
    • Yes, I know that, plenty of examples of state electorates with several names. I was talking about Wikidata though, not the MP lists on Wikipedia. --Canley (talk) 01:51, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose the merger would create confusion - if a reader is reading that X is the member for Norwood, they are then confused when that takes them to Dunstan. Which state seats in NSW are you referring to ? The only ones I am aware of are spelling changes, eg Maneroo, Booroowa or early electorates such as Moreton, Wide Bay, Burnett, Maranoa, Leichhardt and Port Curtis. --Find bruce (talk) 08:26, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support - A fairly obvious thing to do. Dunstan is the same electorate as Norwood, only renamed. We can make clear in the article that the name change occurred. The opening sentence can begin with "Dunstan, formerly Norwood, is a single-member electoral district..." and the Members table can include rows for when the electorate was named. Onetwothreeip (talk) 22:51, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support: a name change is not sufficient to justify a separate article. Wikipedia is WP:NOTADICTIONARY, and doesn't have the same criteria for pages as Wikidata has for entries. Readers are thereby best served by having the history of the district discussed in the context of the current district. For example, imagine a current constituent trying to recall the MP that represented them in 1990. Klbrain (talk) 09:40, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose - as per Canley's comments. Keeping it as two seperate article keeps things less messy and consistent with other electoral division name changes. - GA Melbourne (talk) 08:53, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.