Template talk:Representative

Looking for a graceful way to handle legislative redistricting

Unfortunately, it seems that redistricting has caused {{Template:Representative}} to generate unexpected results. For example, the Murphys, California article states the following:

In the state legislature, Murphys is in the 8th Senate District, represented by Democrat Leland Yee,[11] and the 5th Assembly District, represented by Republican Frank Bigelow.[12] Federally, Murphys is in California's 4th congressional district, represented by Republican Tom McClintock.[13]

If I understand correctly, in fact, Murphys and the rest of Calaveras County is currently a "deferred area" that has no elected state senator during 2013 and 2014. The county is currently covered by Tom Berryhill until the 2014 election. Until the end of 2012, the county was part of California's 1st State Senate district, represented by Republican Ted Gaines of Rocklin. From 2014, the county will be part of California's 8th State Senate district under the new district lines.

This raises several significant problems for many chunks of California (not sure if this is similar in other states):

1 Redistricting in general causes problems for the template, even if it's all done at the same time. However, in that scenario (e.g. new Senate districts from Jan 1 2013), it ought to be possible to coordinate the dataset changes so that the template only flips to show the new representatives and districts on the effective date. 2 Where there's a staggered implementation, then the dataset changes may need to be staggered as well, so that (in the case of the California Senate) the new odd-numbered districts take effect from Jan 1 2013 and the new even-numbered districts take effect from Jan 1 2015. 3 Of course, particular communities move from odd-numbered districts to even-numbered ones (like Calaveras and Amador counties), or from even-numbered ones to odd-numbered ones (like much of San Francisco). For these, it's really difficult to find an automatic way to handle the "deferred" and "accelerated" areas during 2013 and 2014. Perhaps we could expand the list of district parameters referenced in each dataset to add parameters that allow correct handling of these transitional districts. I'm thinking that if the template allowed values such as "d-1-14-8" this could imply a deferred district removed from the 1st (senate) district, temporarily covered by the 14th district and scheduled to be included in the 8th after the 2014 election. Using that approach, the wikitext {{Representative|casd|d-1-14-8|fmt=sdistrict}} would return something like the following:

In the state legislature, Murphys is without an elected state senator during 2013 and 2014 because of redistricting, and is represented by Republican Tom Berryhill from the California's 14th State Senate district. After the 2014 election, this area will be part of California's 8th State Senate district.

There are lots of ways to handle this, with more or less detailed info. Obviously there's a grammatical problem if we have to expand the transcluded text to run into full sentences. But I do think a good aim would be to avoid factually incorrect statements such as Leland Lee representing Gold Country voters. I'd appreciate editors' ideas on an elegant fix. I have neither the skill nor experience with template coding to make these changes, so I will need some assistance to deploy whatever fix is agreed on. Rupert Clayton (talk) 16:49, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

• I suggest substituting this template, and making substitution mandatory. Then it only works once.—GoldRingChip 17:43, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the input, but I'm not sure I understand your proposal. First of all, we have 892 places where {{Template:Representative}} is already used, some of which are correct and some of which are not. These articles would need to be reviewed for any fix. Second, if we used this as a mandatory substituted template then every new article and every fixed one is going to have built-in obsolescence—it will only be accurate until the representative or district boundaries change. Much better (it seems) a template that reflects current accurate political representation. However, maybe the place for this to be used is not in running text, but rather in an infobox, where automated text updates are to be expected.

Either way, the current inaccurate results for many districts need to be fixed. I can believe that there are better ideas than my suggestions above. Anyone want to offer their thoughts? Rupert Clayton (talk) 04:28, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

For the moment, the template should not be used in deferred areas. Feel free to delete the template in those situations. Handling such areas would introduce a lot of complexity to the template. Deferred areas are a recurring inconvenience which will end after the November election and reappear after the 2020 census.—Stepheng3 (talk) 16:34, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

can we remove the question mark for unknown parties

I dont know where the "real" template is ... these days there's so many nested templates and modules and this talk page hasnt been edited in six years so I guess this is probably not it, but .... I would like to remove the question mark that shows when the dataset doesnt know the political party of a sitting official. For example, right now, on Palm Desert, California, the template

the 42nd Assembly District, represented by Democrat Jacqui Irwin

appears, with a question mark that interrupts the user's reading and makes us look like we dont know what we're doing.

On Template talk:Representative/current/California assembly someone else has already noticed this specific error, but I dont know if this is literally the only case or if there's a bug in the code that needs to be fixed.

Thank you,

—Soap— 20:24, 18 June 2021 (UTC)