Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics/Philippine politics

Congressional vs. legislative (encore)

Okay, i am weirded out seeing this and Legislative district of San Pedro in my article alerts having been both created overnight lol. Can we decide on a uniform approach to these articles moving forward? Should people continue creating "Legislative district of foo" articles? Shall we start converting these old provincial and city legislative articles into summary lists linking to their different districts instead, following the structure in main article Legislative districts of the Philippines, with links to 1. Their inclusion in one of the twelve former senatorial districts, 2. Those current individual congressional districts located in the province or city (so that Biñan, Calamba, San Pedro and Santa Rosa are also listed in Laguna legislative districts article), and 3. Their Sangguniang Panlalawagin/Panglunsod or Provincial Board or City Council? Shall we redirect those lone legislative district articles into these new congressional district articles instead? I believe only the post-1986 congressional districts articles are missing as i have completed the older ones among the current 243 districts since we started last year. Will definitely help out in this transition and creation of the rest of the articles if there is clear direction and consensus on the best approach to these articles moving forward. Thanks.--RioHondo (talk) 07:15, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

CC: Howard the Duck, dextergonzalez, Xander Wu, Emperork, jmsay, ken imperial14, please tag other editors you know who may be involved in these articles. Thanks.--RioHondo (talk) 07:43, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Point of order: Laguna-1st was reduced to just San Pedro. Was there a law that renamed what remained of Laguna-1st as San Pedro-lone, or this was just a bad case of San Pedro pride? FWIW, Laguna-1st still exists for Sangguniang Panlalawigan purposes. (Also, this should had been redistricted provincewide but now we're stuck with this naming limbo.)

1. Yes
2. Yes. However, we'd still keep the individual lone district articles for Biñan, Calamba and Santa Rosa.
3. Yes, including Municipal Council.

I'm for keeping these lone legislative district articles; these lone districts are also at-large districts of their respective local legislature. I'd also move for pluralizing "Legislative districts of foo", even the lone district ones, as these are also at the very least at-large districts of another legislature, so there are always more than one district for every "lone district" (Congress+local legislature). Howard the Duck (talk) 13:36, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Okay, how do you do this again? Lol. I hope we're all on the same page here guys.. If i understand your suggestions correctly, the article titles of ALL Legislative districts will have to be plural, even those lone district ones, to cover even their current provincial board/city or municipal council districts and former senate constituency, correct? That means renaming the above article to Legislative districts of San Pedro, Laguna giving an overview and links to 1. Laguna's 1st congressional district, 2. San Pedro City Council or if not available, just a brief summary of the city as one at-large district for its city council (San Pedro's at-large council district), and 3. Its former constituency for the upper house, the Philippines's 4th senatorial district. Btw, ive seen Santa Rosa district's RA but i cant find San Pedro's. If its a still a bill, im sure they'll find out about it sooner or later before it gets signed into law, and San Pedro will just be like Dasmariñas quickly falling back into numbered provincial district in no time teehee! ;)---

First question: Yes. Rest of the edit: There's no law creating "San Pedro's lone district", this is what's left of Laguna's 1st district, somebody just thought that it is now San Pedro-lone coz San Pedro pride. If I'd be the one in charge, I'd redirect San Pedro-lone to Laguna-1st. Howard the Duck (talk) 12:43, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

P.S.: I've redirect San Pedro-lone to Laguna-1st. We should overhaul the Legislative districts of Foo articles once we have completed the Congressional district articles. We should ideally nix the list of legislators from Legislative districts series (I hate how we maintain this it's pseudo-chronological it's confusing to read) and just narrate the history of how the current set up came to be, and the actual legislative districts in the LGU named in that article. Howard the Duck (talk) 14:16, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Good to know. That's what I had in mind as well, i guess we have a little more than an entire year to come up with the remaining existing districts before the scheduled 2022 changes. And i also think we can only really start to revamp those legislative articles once all these districts have been migrated to their own articles. Good news is weve completed 135 of the 243 so far. Will use the task force page created by HueMan for other future updates, but the rest of the contributors better be aware of the changes happening here and edit accordingly. Thanks--RioHondo (talk) 14:40, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Side questions

@RioHondo and Howard the Duck: How about we set some standards? Or draft a guideline at least? Anyway, here are some of my questions/suggestions:

1. How should we address non-notable candidates? With their full name? With their nicknames? How about middle names/initials, should we include all of them or none at all? Some candidates have their names written inconsistently.
2. Should we remove the 2010 election results and just stick to the latest three?
3. Are all lone districts automatically at-large?

—hueman1 (talk • contributions) 14:06, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Let's utilise this Tambayan task force. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 14:09, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

1. Use whatever WP:RS are calling them. If we have an article about a politician already, use the article name with no exceptions except for disambiguation. The 2019 online results apparently used nicknames and it was hard reconciling who actually was who.
2. Other electoral district articles from other countries include all election data that they can find, some even extending to the 19th century. I say we keep it.
3. Yes. Not all "at-large" districts are "lone districts", though.

Howard the Duck (talk) 14:11, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: I'm confused on how {{Election box hold with party link no swing}} and {{Election box gain with party link no swing}} work. What if the candidate transferred to another party, do they "gain" against their former party? Is that how it works? —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 14:19, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I'd suggest we don't use election templates with swings for the most part as it is not relevant to Philippine parties. Howard the Duck (talk) 14:44, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

There's also an ongoing discussion at WP:WPE&R if results tables' seat changes should compare from the last election or from the last party standing prior the election being discussed. Currently for Philippine results tables, the swing compares the last election vs election being discussed, while the seat changes compares prior to election day vs upcoming legislature. The argument is that both should compare to the previous election to the election that is being discussed. If that's the case, in 2019 Philippine House of Representatives elections, PDP-Laban should be +79 instead of -12. Howard the Duck (talk) 14:57, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Setting guidelines is good if there is active participation from many task force members, but like the old PH transportation task force for the creation of streets and highways and the rail projects, it might end up dead as people only really like to edit on their own here than collaborate and talk lol ;) Best to talk among ourselves and carry out the necessary changes we have agreed on or as we see fit ;)--RioHondo (talk) 14:49, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Articles such as this are actually under a "global" WikiProject (WP:WPE&R) that's somewhat more active, somewhat more assertive with the railroads project, and we are actually supposed to used their templates according to how it is supposed to be used. (Railroads project FWIW, allow you to use their template depending on national usage.) Howard the Duck (talk) 15:37, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

District maps and province locators

Seeing as the project is nearing completion (we just reached 201 out of the 243) ;) i would like to remind participants (just two people actually teehee) about an earlier request for standard district maps. As you can see most districts still don't have their own maps, and those that do have maps, they are totally unlike each other. See Manila's 1st congressional district, Pangasinan's 1st congressional district, Batangas's 1st congressional district and La Union's 1st congressional district for comparison. Also the provincial or city locator maps are all jumbled up, i think Manila's districts maps and the Province in Philippines.svg type are most ideal as they dont show what dont need to be shown. Anyways, that's the first and probably the most important to-do item for now. Thanks!--RioHondo (talk) 17:37, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Apparently, these task force pages don't get the attention and love they deserve. No wonder they all dead. Lol. Ping HueMan1, cc Howard the Duck.--RioHondo (talk) 19:20, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

We can perhaps ask TheCoffee (is he still around?) as he made the locator maps that we have now? If we cannot do that we'd have to ask someone else, either in identical style to TheCoffee's maps, or a whole new style altogether.

Also, if you have parties in your reference materials, can you add these to the individual Congress articles? That way, even if we don't have your references, we can still create these, and it will still be the same (at least party-wise) as if you created it. Howard the Duck (talk) 20:46, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

@RioHondo and Howard the Duck: While I'm eager to make locator maps for all of these, the basemap is still on the works in the background. I had to make a new one because Felipe Aira's File:PhlMapCit.svg, where I derived all my maps from, appeared to have some inaccuracies. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 01:33, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Do have the right political map for Isabela now?

Also, that map sorta screws up when converted to PNG. Not everyone can edit vectors and PNG versions that work are handy. Howard the Duck (talk) 13:44, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: Once the map is done we can finally deprecate all PNG maps. Converting them shouldn't be a problem by that time. About Isabela, maybe its districts are not contiguous at all? I'll be using the NAMRIA's data and its previous fixes here on Wiki for the most part but if you find a better source, just ping me. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 19:23, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

@HueMan1: This has been discussed by Talk:Isabela (province), and there's a map that shows that all districts are contiguous, but all maps that we are basing on do not show this. Howard the Duck (talk) 19:26, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: I know that map but it's kinda dubious ngl, are you sure about this? —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 19:37, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

@HueMan1: I myself am doubtful on that map, because that's the only map in the internet that shows that. However, Congress wouldn't make a law that's wrong on this basic fact, and that there are no definitive maps of Isabela. Also, AFAIK, most borders on remote regions haven't been surveyed (still), and that certainly is remote region if there is one. Howard the Duck (talk) 19:54, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, umm I believe TheCoffee has been stale for over a decade or completely dried up by now hehe ;). I look forward to seeing @HueMan's mapping skills! Btw, if distinct maps will be created, we can change those shaded colors, preferably to one that isn't used by any party. Is there? We dont want people to think that all districts and provinces belong to the Kalibapi or KBL parties with those red indicators lol thanks in advance!--RioHondo (talk) 14:48, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

@RioHondo: I was supposed to do these (historical maps) way back after recreating TheCoffee's Congress maps then but this was the time when I discovered the inaccuracies on the basemap: to the point that I could no longer deny them so, I stopped making maps indefinitely. I went back on map making later on and gathered resources for the new basemap. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 19:33, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, how bad was the inaccuracy? Good thing you brought up that discussion on Isabela talk regarding maps. I was gonna say no map is perfect wherever in the world hehe, and they don't have to be, so long as they are more or less close to actual locations. Like we've stuck with maps that cant even spell the municipalities right or have outdated names, or bloated in size for certain municipalities in proportion to supposedly bigger neighboring towns. And these maps even get shared on news sites. That's why i posted in that talk page to only rely on one source, so that even if there may be a few inaccuracies, they remain proportionate and conventionalized. Don't worry about districts appearing as noncontiguous on maps, there really are those districts designed by law to deviate, from main article: compact and contiguous territories where practicable. ;)--RioHondo (talk) 09:41, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

@RioHondo: Several errors/inaccuracies actually, mostly with the projection and alignment of some provinces (some are even disproportionate to their real size). This could be the result of stacking TheCoffee and Seav's locator maps on the top of each other and making a map out of these. But to be honest, I don't really know how Felipe Aira made that map, maybe we'll never know... Anyways, here's a preview of the basemap that I'm making: Blank map of the Philippines (draft).svg. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 10:42, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Ok i don't really know how this works but the political parties map you did for the main page looks good to me. Are you actually going to replace all locator maps in every province or lgu article? What's needed for this project is just identical district in province or city maps. If you can pattern those districts maps to the province and city locator maps found in the Provinces in Wikidata page, then were good to go. Btw, just an observation on your basemap, i don't see Sabah at its feet hehe ;)--RioHondo (talk) 06:28, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

@RioHondo: Oh crap. I totally forgot about Sabah. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 06:34, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

@RioHondo, Howard the Duck, and HueMan1: I made the city/municipality locator maps when I was fresh out of college and had a ton of time on my hands. Seav did them first for a handful of provinces (Cebu and Laguna, I think?), and I did the rest in the style he established. The land borders were traced from Google Maps-- which, back then, only had land borders in the Philippines, no actual useful map data. The city/municipality borders are traced from a mishmash of sources all over the place. I've lost the original files I used to make all these. And they were done in Photoshop, not some vector file format. I'm still an active Wikipedia user, but with family and life getting in the way I'm pretty much totally dormant as a contributor, consider me completely dried up. :) TheCoffee (talk) 04:25, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

The coffee is a classic that i hope will make a comeback even as a low carb unsweetened version of the kopiko candy. ;) @HueMan, how's your coffee?--RioHondo (talk) 06:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

@RioHondo: Gotten quite cold. I'll get back into it once my enthusiasm decides to come back to its place. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 13:48, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

@RioHondo and Howard the Duck: I recently uploaded a more stable version of File:Blank map of the Philippines (draft).svg. I got its data from the NAMRIA. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 16:35, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Can you make land gray and waterforms white? Howard the Duck (talk) 18:02, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: Sure. I still need to redraw some boundaries though. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 00:53, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Organization of articles

@RioHondo: Hello, I'm just wondering why we're using the "[Province]" "[ordinal]" district for the "[legislature]" (e.g. Cotabato's 1st district for the House of Representatives of the Philippines) format? —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 11:35, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

The article titles are at Provinces nth/at-large congressional district. If you are referring to the headings in representation history tables, that's cos of the various legislatures where district was used. See List of legislatures of the Philippines. I thought that was properly explained in the articles though, hehe. I used the same format for all.;). ADD: And we'll never know when congress would evolve again and to which form.--RioHondo (talk) 11:39, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

@RioHondo: Can we simplify it to just the house/chamber's name with years? For example: House of Representatives (1947–1971), House of Representatives (1987–present). —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 12:30, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

That would work for provinces or cities that never underwent a name change hehe. As i was aiming for a standard format to be applied to all districts, i added the changes in names too because there was no Quezon's 1st congressional district for the National Assembly, only Tayabas's 1st, no Davao de Oro's 2nd congressional district for the House of Representatives before 2019, only Compostela Valley's 2nd. ;) But im open to discussing it considering the vast majority have kept their names intact through the different legislatures.--RioHondo (talk) 13:02, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

@RioHondo: Fair point, never thought of that. I guess we'll keep then—for the sake of consistency. By the way, what are the next steps to the good ol' legislative districts of the Philippines? Are we going to move singular form names to plural? —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 01:11, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @Howard the Duck:. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 05:50, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

From what i understand from earlier discussions, those Legislative district articles will be reorganized in such a way that their congressional districts will be converted to just a section of their articles, keeping everything except the lists themselves which would be replaced by links to these new articles. Two new sections will be created for every single one of them: the provincial/city legislative districts for local SP or SB and the former senatorial districts. Both new sections would have the same content as their congressional districts section, a few paragraphs for their description and historical use, with links to the individual board or council districts if any and their former senate constituency. The local legislatures is one area i have not studied though so i'm afraid i have nothing to contribute to that section for now ;) I trust HTD has all the information regarding Sanggunians for each province and city? Once we have those information, we can start the overhaul of all legislative districts articles, with their titles all moved to plural, yes.--RioHondo (talk) 06:29, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, we'd move all of these to plural. AFAIK, provincial board districts are identical to congressional districts for the most part, except for highly urbanized and independent component cities being included in congressional districts of the province they are associated with (examples are Cotabato City and Butuan); lately, there have been component cities that have been given its own congressional districts, but are still included in provincial board districts (San Jose del Monte and the cities of Laguna-1st are examples). Sangguniang Panlungsod districts are mostly the same to congressional districts with some exceptions. Sangguniang Bayan districts are always at-large save for Pateros. COMELEC has had resolutions that show seat allocations for every election, but I dunno if they save them.

It'll be interesting to see the development in places such as Biñan when it had 8 Sangguniang Bayan members for the longest time, then became a city in 2010 where it had 12 Sangguniang Bayan members elected at-large, then had its own congressional representation in 2015. Who knows they might have its own Sangguniang Panlalawigan representation once they sort out Laguna's districts in the future. Also, does anyone know how local legislatures were organized pre-Local Government Code?

Basically, the legislative districts articles should be organized this way:

1. Senatorial representation
   1. Senatorial districts
   2. Explanation of current at-large system
2. Congressional districts
   1. Malolos Congress representation
   2. 2nd Republic National Assembly representation
   3. Interim Batasang Pambansa representation
3. Provincial board districts
4. City/municipal council districts

This is where we'd be putting how they were redistricted and such, and we'd be removing the list of congressmen. Howard the Duck (talk) 14:06, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

I wish i could be of more help but really that's as far as my knowledge on PH politics goes lol. Still have a lot more reading to do on LGU code and local matters. Lets see you do it and we'll try to look for patterns and help with the rest of the articles? ;) But yea, those are exactly what every legislative districts article should look. That's a whole bunch of districts within each LGU past and present, hence the article titles in plural. Btw, try to reach out to anyone you know who knows these things, those are very important pointers what HTD wrote there, maybe we should not be even doing user talk pages and reach out to the WP tambayan instead. Pls save this on our Task force page too. Very crucial. Thanks--RioHondo (talk) 17:36, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Our article on Sangguniang Panlalawigan has details on how provincial boards looked like pre-LGC 1991. Our articles on Sangguniang Panlungsod and Sangguniang Bayan do not have such details, and honestly I dunno where to look. Manila City Council has details on its historical composition but I dunno if that applied to other towns and cities.

We should also be doing articles on provincial governors. We still don't have them all. Unlike the provincial boards which you don't have to list all historical members (list of current members should suffice), a provincial governor article must have a list of all governors (or at least starting from the American era). Howard the Duck (talk) 20:22, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

@Howard the Duck: I reorganised the article Legislative districts of Abra by following your suggestions above. Should I proceed reorganising the rest or is there something that I missed? (notifying RioHondo as well) —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 05:59, 16 March 2021 (UTC).

Great work, Hue! That is exactly how every legislative article should be organized. Please proceed with the rest of the articles and we'll see what other improvements can still be made along the way. We are also waiting for the district maps lol, but no need to rush as i myself am taking my time with completing the district articles, i didnt realize there were far too many defunct districts but making them anyway to also make easier navigation. The election results per district would also need attention as i completely abandoned these sections when those boxes started acting up. But there is no deadline ;) Carry on--RioHondo (talk) 06:20, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I would've preferred having the details of every redistricting/reappopriation on each legislature at the "Legislative districts" article instead of what we are currently doing where they are one column in every congressional district article, but this should be better than we were doing on each "Legislative article of Foo" article. Howard the Duck (talk) 16:55, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Scope, resources, and etc.

@RioHondo, Howard the Duck, Dextergonzalez, Xander Wu, Emperork, Jmsay, and Ken imperial14: (and other interested spectators) I moved some of our recent discussions related to the congressional districts in the Philippines here. Now, since we're talking about senatorial districts and provincial/city/municipal boards, I think we should change this task force's name to something better. But before that, what is the scope of this task force? I'm thinking of adding elections and referendums in the Philippines here as well, since these topics and the former are generally on the same page. Another thing is the resources, I find some representatives' (especially non-notable ones) political affiliations/parties hard to verify because there's no references and sources. If anyone can find anything useful, it would be very helpful for all of us here. Thanks everyone, have a great day. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 07:32, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

How about the all encompassing Filipino politics task force under the WP:POLITICS project like WP:AmPol? Please add Hariboneagle927 to this project, he is our main man when it comes to Bangsamoro politics. As for political parties, did you know that even sources themselves differ on many politicians parties, for example the House records books says one politico is one thing, while other year books i have say another. Id say no need to be stringent when it comes to these things as turncoats are aplenty in PH lol thats actually the norm since 1946. ;)--RioHondo (talk) 08:19, 4 March 2021 (UTC)