Template talk:Politics of Poland

I have modified Halibutt's excellent version from earlier today - in my opinion, the coat of arms was simply too large and flashy, diverting attention from the actual content of the individual articles. I have also made the table narrower to create more space for article content. To improve readability, I increased the font size, as the table can easily accommodate all required text, even with the new narrower width. I've had to remove a few indents, but I believe they are not indispensable. Finally, I inserted a new section for political parties - including the nine parties which appear to have a realistic chance of entering the Sejm as per the latest available CBOS poll. --Thorsten1 23:26, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

As I said in the edit summary, this template is not mine, it's merely a localisation of the table on Politics of China. I must say that I like your version, with the exception of indent in the lower part. Perhaps it could be reintroduced? Or the whole election thingie could be reorganised a tad? I'm not sure, but the way it is now, the lower part is not that easily-readable. Or perhaps we could make the year links really tiny?

As to political parties - why not? I only made some two minor glitches: I reverted back to the term referenda (referendums sounds so collonial...) and corrected the PD abbreviation. Other than that I like the template even more now. Thanks for the corrections! Halibutt 00:06, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

I have now decreased the font size for the party acronyms and election years - looks better that way, indeed. Regarding the indents - personally, I feel they are dispensable, as the headline/content relationship is obvious enough without them. The main reason why I removed them, however, was sheer laziness, as I found it too tricky to get them right within the narrower template. So if you feel like tinkering with them, go ahead and good luck ;-).

As for referenda vs. referendums, "colonial" is an apt label for the latter :-D - but, picking up on the idea, the pidgin plural appears to have retroacted on the language of the masters: A quick Google search confirms my intuition that "referendums" is clearly more common these days (compare [1] and [2]). Ironically, many of the results for "referendums", including the top one, originate with the BBC, that keeper of the Holy Gral of language... ;-). Against this backdrop, "referenda" does have a slight haute bourgeois or bildungsbürger ring to it. Nonetheless, if you are on a mission to restore the original plural to its rightful place, I am not going to stop you, and this is as good a place as any other to start the crusade...

On a completely different note, I found that the PDPoland template rests awkwardly in the articles; both in Firefox and Opera, the text next to it looks as if it were glued to the border of the box (it's not quite as bad in Internet Explorer). Personally, I have no idea what is causing this; if you are more savvy about the intricacies of wiki syntax, maybe you could take care of that some time? --Thorsten1 11:03, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, it looks much better now. I'll have a try with those non-breaking spaces and see what I can do. As to the Royal Language - I'm by no means an expert and I believe we can go either way here. And if so, then why not to use a more pleasant-looking version? :) Also, there's no need to waste our time on a non-existent article name, so I won't oppose if anyone decides to switch to "referendums".

As to the other template - I have no idea what is wrong with it... Seems fine to me. Halibutt 14:49, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

The referenda/ums issue really isn't worth having a row over - let's cross that bridge when we come to it. ;-) Regarding the template - it's good to hear that it looks fine to you. Maybe I will put up a screenshot later on to demonstrate what I mean. But as no one apart from me seems to have this problem, it probably isn't worth the effort. --Thorsten1 18:07, 29 May 2005 (UTC)