Template talk:Senate of Canada

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I've gone ahead and been bold and radically changed the template. Before, it was sorted by party; I've changed it to sort by state (with party colors), just as the Australian and American templates do. ¿SFGiДnts! ^{¿Complain! ¿Analyze! ¿Review!} 00:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of comments about this template style:

1. As currently formatted, it's massively oversized. Because the United States senate is structured differently each state has exactly two senators, so {{Current U.S. Senators}} can be arranged into multiple columns, and in Australia, there are only six states and a territorial section. But here, using the same format results in a template that's far too long vertically.
2. The colour choices for party identification are also too subtle, in my opinion; on the screen I'm looking at right now, the PC and Liberal colours are at best barely distinguishable from each other if I'm looking at the screen straight on — and if I look at the screen even slightly askance, the colours completely disappear. And before I applied the Canadian red-white style override, against the navbox-default blue background the colours were even more indistinguishable from each other.

Any other input? Bearcat (talk) 06:10, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Update: I've made a minor change to the template formatting; if we're using background colouring to denote party affiliations, then we don't also need a party abbreviation in brackets after each individual senator's name. This does bring the vertical size down somewhat, and makes the template look a bit less busy and more organized. I'm not entirely convinced that it reduces the size enough, but it's a start. Bearcat (talk) 06:59, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Currently the highlighted colours for the different senator affiliations are not distinct enough. Independent and Conservative are almost indistinguishable as are Independent Liberal and Progressive Conservative. My attempt at a change may have been too stark but there needs to be some happy medium. EncyclopediaUpdaticus (talk) 14:30, 21 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Current:

• Conservative (C)
• Independent (Ind.) or Not affiliated (N/A)
• Independent Liberal (Ind. L)
• Progressive Conservative

My change:

• Conservative (C)
• Independent (Ind.) or Not affiliated (N/A)
• Independent Liberal (Ind. L)
• Progressive Conservative

Happy medium???

I agree the colours are almost indistinguishable, but my concern is that increasing the colour's prominence will not be consistent with WP:COLOUR. Particularly with the Conservatives, where you have a blue background behind (if you have default link colours in your browser) blue or purple text, depedning if a user has previously visited the link. I think we need to consider the alternative, which is to not use colour at all. --Natural R_X 14:42, 21 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Another option might be to list members by party affiliation rather than by province. I might suggest that (for now) affiliation to party is more important than what province they come from. EncyclopediaUpdaticus (talk) 15:34, 21 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would argue the opposite, particularly as the Senate becomes more independent. The purpose of the Senate was to provide a house of "sober second thought", and achieve a balance of regional interests. Furthermore, a senator's affiliation may change, but the province they are appointed to represent will not; why categorize them under the less static grouping? --Natural R_X 16:13, 21 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I can hardly read the text in CPC in the new format. Dark blue background with blue text. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 20:22, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]