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Contents 1 Documentation 2 Suggested Move

Documentation

The following fields are active in the politician template:

Field name	Current use	Future use	Notes	Original data source
term_start	Manually entered. Populates Property:Term start. Used extensively. Indicates the first official date the politician filled their *current* office. Can be used to calculate seniority.	Same as current.	Term end and next election are independent of Senate class, as there are people who have special elections where senate class corresponds with the regular elections.	wikipedia
term_end	Manually entered. Populates Property:Term end. Doesn't seem to be used.	Could be used to compute those members who are retiring from their seats.		wikipedia
otherparty	Manually entered. Populates Property:Otherparty. Used for states like NY where, while a politician might principally identify with the Democratic or Republican party, they also have a secondary political affiliation. Using this keeps the Democratic/Republican lines neat for the purposes of computing caucuses, etc., while still allowing for nuance. This is currently not used very well or widely.	It would be nice if all the NY and other pols who have secondary parties were filled-in.		wikipedia
Birth	Entered manually. Fills the Property:DOB (type: date)			Cause Caller
First Elected	Manually entered. Populates Property:First elected (type date). Applies to the date of the election for their current office.	Same as current.		Cause Caller
Next Election	Manually entered. Populates Property:Next election (type date). Applies to the date of the next date of election for their current office.	?	Should this be blanked out for people who have confirmed they are retiring? Right now it's kind of a theoretical date.	Cause Caller
110th Leadership	Manually defined on politician page. Populates Property:110th leadership (type: Page).	Should this be done on the 110th Congress page? Semantic problems?		Cause Caller
Freshman	Manually entered. Populates Property:Freshman. Uses "yes" or "no". Waiting for help from Yaron Koren before switching to Boolean.	Note: Will need to switch over for the 112th Congress.		Cause Caller
Previous Political Work	Manually entered. Populates Property:Previous political work. Extensively populated (good for a search?) but done haphazardly so data analysis or exclusion is not viable.	Should make this tighter in the future.		Cause Caller
110th Committee Membership	Manually entered. Populates Property:110th committee membership. Uses "n/a" for members who were not part of the 110th.	Should restrict available options to names of 110th committees.		Cause Caller
Zip Code Affiliations	Doesn't seem to be used. DISABLED from Template:Politician. Still vestigial blank spots on all the MOCs that had the template added manually.			Cause Caller
Current Office	Manually defined. Populated Property:Current office String with defined options: "U.S. Senate" "U.S. House of Representatives" and "None".	May need to branch out to include candidates for Congress and other non-Congress types.		New
110th Committee chairs	Manually defined. Populates Property:110th committee chairs (undefined type. default: page). Seems to have problems with commas. Checking with Yaron Koren for help in clearing up problems.	Should shift to definition on committee pages. DISABLED in Template:Politician.		New
110th Committee Ranking Member	DISABLED in Template:Politician. Manually defined. Populates Property:110th committee membership (undefined type. default: page). Seems to have problems with commas. Checking with Yaron Koren for help in clearing up problems.	Should shift to definition on committee pages.		New
111th Leadership	Open. Defined on politicians profiles. Populates Property:111th leadership	Define on the House leadership and Senate leadership pages? May be semantic problems in doing this.		New
111th Committee Membership	DISABLED in Template:Politician. Currently obsolete. Information is drawn from committee pages.	Disabled in the Template:Politician	Should shift to definition on committee pages. DISABLED in Template:Politician.	New
111th Committee Chairs	DISABLED in Template:Politician. Open. Defined on politicians profiles. Populates Property:111th committee chairs. NEEDS TO BE MORE FILLED-IN.	Should shift to definition on committee pages. DISABLED in Template:Politician.	Needs to be set up as semantic form on committee pages. Note that the Sunlight API now serves committee and subcommittee memberships but not chairs or ranking members.	New
111th Committee Ranking Members	DISABLED in Template:Politician. Open. Defined on politicians' profiles. Populates 111th committee ranking member. NEEDS TO BE MORE FILLED-IN.	Should shift to definition on committee pages. DISABLED in Template:Politician.		New
111th Caucuses	DISABLED in Template:Politician. Open. Defined on politicians' profiles. Defines Property:111th caucuses	??	Better to put on individual caucus pages. Restrict values? No action as of now. Left as open on politician pages.	New
110th Caucuses	DISABLED in Template:Politician.			Congresspedia
District Office 1 Address				Congresspedia
District Office 1 Phone				Congresspedia
District Office 1 Fax				Congresspedia
Campaign E-mail	Defined on politician profile. Populates Property:Campaign email (type: email)			Congresspedia
Campaign E-mail Link	Defined on politician profile. Populates Property:Campaign webform email (type:URL)			Congresspedia
Campaign Homepage				Congresspedia
Campaign Office 1 Address				Congresspedia
Campaign Office 1 Phone				Congresspedia
Campaign Office 1 Fax				Congresspedia

Suggested Move

I would like to suggest moving the Documentation segment from the Talk page to the Article page. Goldbishop 00:37, January 21, 2012 (UTC)