Some #wikidataMPs work tonight: we now have all sitting hereditary (88x) & clerical (25x) members of the Lords marked as such: the life peers need a bit more work, since we're currently reporting about fifty too many. Suspect we're just not up to date on retirements.

this may be the first time I have had to *un*resign someone #wikidataMPs

& on that note, today's #wikidataMPs query prompted by a Q on twitter - who's resigned from Parliament twice? There are eight MPs who've done it since 1940 https://w.wiki/6pbq

Six involved a peerage, so the most recent one before Johnson to just be two outright resignations was John Erskine (Weston-super-Mare 1934 and Brighton 1941)

And lastly, there have been two times since 1950 where someone resigned and then someone else promptly resigned the next day https://w.wiki/6pFX - 2022 and 2023, so goodness only knows what 2024 will bring. Or Sunday, for that matter.

(Pleased with this from the #wikidataMPs perspective: coding for "next day" is very tricky in SPARQL)

Since 1950, there have been six days where two people resigned, one day where three people did (5/1/77, all to go to the European Commission), and one day where fifteen did (17/12/85, Ulster Unionists protesting the Anglo-Irish Agreement) https://w.wiki/6pFQ #wikidataMPs

Purely of academic interest: the percentage of MPs serving in each Parliament since 1950 who resigned (via Chilterns etc). We're closing in on the 2010 rate... https://w.wiki/6pEL #wikidataMPs

This evening's #wikidata work has drifted from #wikidataMPs into legislation: here is a report for all years since 1801 showing the number of distinct public Acts plus a rough indicator of where we may have gaps.

Broadly, decent coverage 1801-1870 but with a few gappy years; partial 1870-1960; pretty good after that. https://w.wiki/6U3W

Today's bit of #wikidataMPs work: resurrecting an old query to work out chains of descent for individual MPs whose father, grandfathers, etc were also MPs. The tweaks is that this one counts the intervening generations!

Sample for William Edgcumbe, 4th Earl of Mount Edgcumbe - goes back to his great-9th-grandfather. https://w.wiki/6TpJ

Tidying up some of the #wikidataMPs by-elections items tonight prior to setting up an import - at the moment, we seem to have items for 1109 by-elections since 1832, of which surprisingly only 376 are linked from the elected MP's term.

In total there were 3788 by-elections in this period, so we have about 10% linked from the MP and another 20% with items but unlinked. The remaining 70% will need items and then linking...

Been poking at birth and death dates for the #wikidataMPs tonight: here is the average age of MPs at their first successful general election 1918-date https://w.wiki/68x7 General drift to younger at first election - but not perhaps as quick as you might expect. #histparl

today's unexpected delight: a mention in the Independent! Keeping you on top of those vitally important historical details. #wikidataMPs #histparl https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rishi-sunak-general-election-2024-will-he-win-b2247125.html

today's unexpected delight: a mention in the Independent! Keeping you on top of vitally important historical details. #wikidataMPs #histparl https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rishi-sunak-general-election-2024-will-he-win-b2247125.html

#wikidataMPs update: electoral data going in! Currently just finishing up 2019, data queued up back to 1983 but might not get it all in tonight. So far 12 entries have discrepancies in vote count, all of which like fairly straightforward typos - will dig into those in a bit. https://w.wiki/67Ea

Productive evening chipping away at the #wikidataMPs - have put together a script for the first tranche of electoral data! Dummy edit at https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q4115189&type=revision&diff=1789472005&oldid=1789471921 and will see about doing a few years worth tomorrow evening.

(I think @oravrattas is correct that in the long run we will want to switch to election-constituency items, but this is at least a stepping stone...)

Starting to work out a model for elections on the #wikidataMPs dataset and I think this is all we can reasonably say - seat, party, votes, result, ranking.

Not sure I like "represents" for party (maybe just use P102 - part member - instead?)

An interesting oddity: we can't currently model share-of-vote *or* majority, unless we have a full list of candidate items or a separate item for the constituency election itself, and deduce it from those. Hmm.

(/cc @oravrattas - thoughts?)

Starting to work out a model for elections on the #wikidataMPs dataset and I think this is all we can reasonably say - seat, party, votes, result, ranking.

Not sure I like "represents" for party (maybe just use P102 - part member - instead?)

An interesting oddity: we can't currently model share-of-vote *or* majority, unless we have a full list of candidate items or a separate item for the constituency election itself, and deduce it from those. Hmm.

#wikidataMPs question: is it worth my porting over @everympbot from twitter, or is it time for it to gently fade away?

#wikidataMPs question: is it worth my porting over @everympbot from twitter, or is it time for it to gently fade away?

#introduction post!

I'm a Scottish librarian working in London; primarily what I write about here is my #wikipedia and #wikidata work.

The biggest chunk of that is the #wikidataMPs #ParliamentaryHistory project - trying to build a rich dataset of historic parliamentarians, and figure out what interesting things it can tell us.

#introduction post!

I'm a librarian working in London; primarily what I write about here is my #wikipedia and #wikidata work.

The biggest chunk of that is the #wikidataMPs #ParliamentaryHistory project - trying to build a rich dataset of historic parliamentarians, and figure out what interesting things it can tell us.