Template talk:British Columbia elections

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Elections and Referendums

This template is within the scope of WikiProject Elections and Referendums, an ongoing effort to improve the quality of, expand upon and create new articles relating to elections, electoral reform and other aspects of democratic decision-making. For more information, visit our project page.Elections and ReferendumsWikipedia:WikiProject Elections and ReferendumsTemplate:WikiProject Elections and ReferendumsElections and Referendums

Referendums/Referenda

I also used to use "Referenda", but some time ago was pointed to Referendum#Terminology by a fellow editor. Cheers, Number 5 7 20:44, 15 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why did that section make you change your spelling, it supports the -a spelling. It says that "referendums" is a plurality of ballots whereas "referenda" is a plurality of issues. In the case of the template, we are talking about a plurality of issues. Given that the external source and the Wikipedia article both support the -a spelling I'm going to switch it back unless you can point to something in the MOS that supports the -ums spelling. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 20:52, 15 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The sentence that says "the use of referenda is deprecated by the Oxford English Dictionary". You'll note that all other 300+ elections templates (incl. {{Canada elections}}, {{New Brunswick elections}}, {{Nunavut elections}}, {{NL Elections}}, {{Northwest Territories elections}}, {{NS Elections}}, {{Ontario elections}}, {{PEIElections}}, {{Quebec elections}} etc) use "referendums" for this reason. Number 5 7 20:56, 15 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The argument that its deprecated is demonstrably wrong; the -a spelling gets 3.5 million Google hits whereas the -ums spelling gets 4.1 million, less than a 20% difference. It also makes no sense to say that one spelling has replaced the other while also saying that the spellings have different meanings; if they mean different things, we should use the correct meaning regardless of how common that usage is. As for its use on other Wikipedia templates, MOS:TIES trumps consistency across articles, and the body that regulates referenda/referendums in this jurisdiction uses the -a spelling at a 5:1 ratio on its online publications. Elections Ontario uses the -a spelling at a 35:1 ratio, so that template should be changed too. Can you cite any Wikipedia policy that supports the -ums spelling other than a desire for cross-article consistency? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:13, 15 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You'll have to bring it to the attention of the OED then. MOS:TIES is irrelevant here, as it is about national varieties of English (e.g. flavour vs flavor), which is not the issue at hand (this is not a British vs Canadian English thing). Number 5 7 21:30, 15 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:TIES is very relevant here. Apparently use of the -a spelling had depreciated in Oxford English, but in British Columbian and Ontarian professional English it is the most common spelling by a wide margin. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:43, 15 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

But it's not a spelling issue related to national varieties of English. As you can see here, "referenda" is also used in the UK. The choice between the two words seems to be more of a linguistic issue around the specific meaning of the two alternatives, and it appears to me that Wikipedia has chosen one of the two versions for a specific reason (according to one editor here, referenda is "cod Latin"). This may be better discussed at WP:Elections and referendums. Number 5 7 10:29, 16 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't really cod Latin if, as the quote you gave suggests, the two spellings have two different meanings. Even if we ignored the fact that the prevalence of spellings does change significantly between national varieties of English (which I don't think we should), the Oxford quote suggests that the -a spelling is the definition that we want in this case. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:14, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's cod Latin in the sense that the Latin doesn't really support the use of that spelling as the standard plural. In my experience hardly anybody uses both "referendums" and "referenda" to mean different things, and the exceptions are nearly always people who had previously used "referenda" as the plural in all circumstances who when it's pointed out that the Latin doesn't really support it then try to retain "referenda" in some form. In practice a single plural spelling is used and "referendums" is more logical because it doesn't try to take a Latin spelling and redefine it (and also because words in English should use English rules of pluralisation, regardless of their language of origin). Timrollpickering (talk) 18:07, 5 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What makes you say that Latin doesn't support the use of that spelling? Our Wiktionary entry for the word seems to support the -a spelling as the plurals in Latin, unless I'm missing something. As for English, I would argue that English rules for pluralization include more than the -s rule and the vowel-shifting rule. In some words, the -s spelling is significantly less common than the spelling in its original language (e.g., cactuses/cacti). The pluralization rules -us/-i and -um/-a are so well-integrated into English that they are often used and understood when the root language isn't Latin, such as with the technically incorrect but still somewhat common octopus/octopi. In the case of "referenda", I think that it's common enough (and correct enough) that we don't have to "correct" our references and subjects when they use it, like Elections BC does. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 18:57, 5 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

removal of links to sections in federal election pages

Hi RedBlueGreen93,

I have removed the links you recently added to this navbox to sections of articles on Canadian federal elections. Per WP:BIDIRECTIONAL, those pages should all have this infobox added to them given those links, which is clearly overkill. And no, that does not mean we should go add this navbox to those pages; I think this edit helps demonstrate why we have the WP:BIDIRECTIONAL guideline, to ensure navboxes stay focussed.

This navbox is for British Columbian elections. Maybe a good way of thinking of that is elections run/managed/authorized by BC for representatives in BC institutions? If we are really keen to point people to BC results in federal elections, suggest maybe a page called "List of Canadian/federal election results in British Columbia" that could be included here with the links that have been removed so people are aware but the navbox is not expanded beyond its focus. —Joeyconnick (talk) 17:58, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was already in the process of making an article for federal election results in BC (Draft:List of federal election results in British Columbia). For now I'm fine with getting rid of the links to article sections, although I have re-added the links to the proper articles about federal elections in British Columbia, as those ones are WP:BIDIRECTIONAL. This was already done in Ontario and Newfoundland. It is also done in each election navbox for US states. I disagree that federal elections are beyond the focus of the navbox. RedBlueGreen93 19:37, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]