Template talk:Infobox government cabinet

Ministry or cabinet

Given that the infobox is called "government cabinet" I'd be inclined to leave the references to a cabinet rather than a ministry. In any case everyone needs to stop editing the template as it changes every page it's transcluded on, let's discuss first. What are other's feelings on whether it should be ministry or cabinet? Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 03:29, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I guess the problem comes from the meaning of "ministry" as ministry (collective executive). The linked article says it's "usually preceded by the definite article, i.e., the ministry", but we don't do that in this template, so we're using it in a manner ambiguous with ministry (government department). The word "cabinet" is not ambiguous in this context, it refers to cabinet (government), and it matches the template title, so I really fail to see why we should prefer another term. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 07:37, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

JFTR I was reverting an edit for being "completely wrong" because its edit summary had said:

This template is only used on pages which are about “ministries” in the sense of governments, as opposed to cabinets. I am fixing wording to make this clearer, because they are not the same thing.

This change did not make this clearer, and indeed it eludes me why they chose the ambiguous term instead of the term they used themselves: "government". It is in turn ambiguous in American English usage, but there the matter is of expanded scope rather than entirely shifted scope. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 07:50, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Provisional Government of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia

The article Provisional Government of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia (PGDFY) uses this template as it's infobox. The issue I noticed was that if you're navigating using the flag navigation for the Former Countries infobox, it takes you to the PGDFY page, which does not have flag navigation in the infobox - you get stuck.

I see that flag navigation is not possible in this infobox. Should this template be continued to be used on the PGDFY page or should Infobox Former Country be used in it's place? Feel free to ping me when responding! --hmich176 10:27, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

@Hmich176: added previous and successor links. Frietjes (talk) 18:28, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

@Frietjes: - thank you much. I wasn't sure if that was proper or not for this template. --hmich176 03:49, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Template talk:Infobox cabinet which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 19:29, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Assistance

There is one fatal "flaw" with this infobox, which is that it does not allow for alternative names when displaying "70th cabinet of such and such". In many cases, our articles are not about cabinets, but about ministries or governments (Commonwealth sense) or councils of ministers. The template should be modified to allow for alternative terminology, otherwise it can be misleading. RGloucester — ☎ 02:48, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

To follow up, I meant to say that I'd like to see a "cabinet_type" parameter drawn up, which would allow one to specify what should appear in that phrase. RGloucester — ☎ 03:13, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

User:RGloucester, added |cabinet_type=, but would be nice to have it documented. Frietjes (talk) 18:10, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

many which could be updated like this Frietjes (talk) 18:12, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this. It is a great improvement. RGloucester — ☎ 18:40, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

New parliamentary majority parameter

@Nub Cake: Does this new parameter not duplicate |legislature_status=? Also, how did you derive the 74 seat count here? It's 276 seats for an absolute majority; 312 − 275 = 37. Alakzi (talk) 18:23, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Not sure, I've checked a few pages that used this infobox and none of them seemed to give the majority. I calculated the majority as (312-(550-312)) = 312-238=74? Nub Cake (talk) 18:25, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

You can express it in writing, e.g. |legislature_status=Absolute majority (X over threshold). What's that a calculation of? Are we not calculating the number of seats they hold over the absolute majority threshold? Alakzi (talk) 18:39, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

If you look at the Majority article, or the 2015 UK general election article as an example, I think a majority is calculated by subtracting opposition members from government members. I.e., Government MPs minus not government MPs. Nub Cake (talk) 18:43, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Right, so you're calculating the majority they hold over the remainder of the legislature. I suppose that makes more sense in this context. It should still rather be placed in a parenthesis inside |legislature_status=. Alakzi (talk) 18:53, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

OK, fair enough. Nub Cake (talk) 18:55, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Restrict number of images to two

I was surprised to find the infobox supports a column of four images, which probably isn't something we want in an infobox. Normally a single image should be enough, but for exceptional cases I'd be okay with a second one. Larger image galleries should not be part of the infobox but may be appended to the article text. I therefore propose adding tracking categories to find out whether the third and fourth image is used at all, and would then phase out the respective parameters. --PanchoS (talk) 10:13, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

President, Monarch, Prime Minister, Taoiseach, and Governor-General headings.

Comparing the articles for Australian Prime Ministers and their governments, (eg. Scott Morrison and Morrison Ministry, where this template is used), there is a discrepancy in usage. There is a decades-long discussion in Australia over the identity of the head of state (see Australian head of state dispute, and the consensus solution has been to use titles where there is no dispute, such as "Sovereign" and "Governor-General". This complies with NPOV.

Briefly, the Australian situation is that the title of "head of state" is not defined in any Australian law, and the Governor-General, while nominally the Queen's representative was initially given significant powers in his own right and has accrued many more over the past century that were not given to the monarch. So the position is more than being an agent of the monarch, and in fact the original situation was that the Governor-General was the Australian representative of the British Government. Calling him the representative of the Queen was a polite way of putting it. With the Statute of Westminster, the then Dominions were seen as equal in status to the United Kingdom, with HM advised by dominion governments, rather than the British. High Commissioners were appointed to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and so on to represent the British government, filling the same role as ambassadors in non-Commonwealth nations.

With the passage of the Australia Act, the British government ceased to have any power over Australian affairs at all. The High Court determined in 1998 that the UK was now "a foreign power", and there have been various republican movements aimed at removing the monarch entirely from Australian government. The Queen is much admired and respected, but cannot possibly be seen as "one of us", which is a primary function of the role of head of state.

The United Nations diplomatically lists the Australian head of state as the Queen in brackets, above the name and title of the Governor-General. (see page three of this document.

I'd like to add "Monarch" and "Governor-General" to the template as titles, in order to bring usage for articles where this template is used into consensus line with other articles where NPOV titles are used. --Pete (talk) 01:44, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

The monarch is Australia's head of state, not the governor-general. About 2 years ago, at an Rfc at WP:POLITICS (archive #17), the result was overwhelmingly in favor of showing the 'Monarch' as the Australian head of state. GoodDay (talk) 02:01, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

If what you're proposing, is adopted for all 15 non-UK commonwealth realms, then that's acceptable. Otherwise, no. GoodDay (talk) 02:15, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

I refer you to the Infobox Country template, as used in Canada, Australia, and other Commonwealth nations. The terms used under the "Government" heading are "Monarch", "Governor-General", and "Prime Minister", a consensus which has held for well over a decade (as per this version dated June 2007. If we look at Canada, we can go back even further, for example this version edited by yourself. I note multiple edits by yourself on both articles, and never a murmur about the titles used in the infobox.

This usage is, in fact, consistent over all 15 non-UK Commonwealth realms, such as Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and the rest. --Pete (talk) 05:09, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Exactly which type of articles are you proposing a change to? I thought you meant articles like 29th Canadian Ministry & Sixth Labour Government of New Zealand for example. GoodDay (talk) 09:13, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Good idea. Have to include "Governor General" (no hyphen) for Canadian articles. Shouldn't be too difficult to run through Commonwealth realm articles where the template is used. Good way for you to boost your edit stats with not a lot of work! --Pete (talk) 16:49, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Looking at where the template is used, obviously it needs to be updated to include titles such as "President" and "Taoiseach" in (for example) Government of the 29th Dáil. Having "Head of state" and "Head of governemnt" for every nation bears all the marks of tackiness and expediency. Bring such articles in line with titles used in associated articles such as Republic of Ireland and Bertie Ahern. --Pete (talk) 17:01, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Accordingly I've modified the template in the sandbox to show titles rather than generic labels. Most of the variables were there already, such as the ability to show the monarch's title after their name. There's a little bit of fiddly new stuff in the deputy head of government heading, which can show a title if set, "Deputy" + head of government title, if set, and "Deputy head of government" if neither has been set. Feel; free to import fresh examples into the test cases; just remember to add "/sandbox" to the template name. Any bugs or features, let me know, or just do 'em yourself. --Pete (talk) 20:20, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Looking over your testcases, I agree with your proposed changes (generic labels to titles) which brings these aforementioned articles' infoboxes in line with their respective sovereign state articles' infoboxes. PS - The German head of state is the President :) GoodDay (talk) 20:50, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

American English

Is there any way to enable American English for this template. Per Talk:Cabinet_of_Joe_Biden#Semi-protected_edit_request_on_17_June_2021, it is odd to see "organisations" rather than "organizations" and terminology that Americans don't use, like "ministers", in the article about Joe Biden's cabinet. – Muboshgu (talk) 03:53, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I've thought a little bit about how this could be added, and one option is using {{engvar}}. This requires we either add a |engvar= parameter to this template, which would be set to en-US in AmEng articles, or perhaps infer it automatically based on |jurisdiction=. The explicit parameter works and is clear, but is in theory not necessary if the jurisdiction can be reliably interpreted to determine the (default/likely) engvar. I think {{engvar}} will already support the |jurisdiction= values for the uses we are interested in, but I haven't tested it. — The Earwig (talk) 06:12, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Done by inferring from |jurisdiction= after some testing showed it would work. — The Earwig (talk) 06:34, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

The Earwig, thanks! – Muboshgu (talk) 22:46, 17 June 2021 (UTC)