Template talk:Senate of Canada

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)

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)

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)

Change colours please

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)