Talk:Collective title

List[edit]

@James500 - I wanted to open a section here re how a list should be structured. From the Public General Acts since 1960 alone I have identified around 500, though there is a noticeable drop-off in the 1980s, and none have been conferred since 2007. I know that many Local Acts also confer them, and I imagine that the late 19th c. through to the 1950s will probably be at a similar density to the 1960s/70s. I would guesstimate that we're therefore looking at something in the region of 2–3,000.

The main issue in terms of how to structure the list is the fact that collective titles are often nested (e.g. the National Insurance Acts 1965 to 1974 are the National Insurance Acts 1965 to 1973 plus the National Insurance Act 1974). This can go several layers deep. Worse than that, it's not always a case of simply layering them on top of each other. One example of this is:

Education Acts 1944 to 1990
- Education Acts 1944 to 1988
- Education (Student Loans) Act 1990
Education Acts 1944 to 1991 - omits the 1990 Act while also adding a 1991 Act
- Education Acts 1944 to 1988
- School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Act 1991
Education Acts 1944 to 1992 - reincludes the 1990 Act, adds the 1991 Act on top, and then adds a 1992 Act as well
- Education Acts 1944 to 1990
- School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Act 1991
- Further and Higher Education Act 1992

While we could just list them all one after the other, the layout at Greenwich Hospital Act shows that it's very difficult to parse, even at a small-scale. Theknightwho (talk) 19:28, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The approach adopted at Greenwich Hospital Act is the only approach that I can think of for "nested" groups of collective titles that include a sufficiently large number of individual Acts and a sufficiently large number of individual collective titles. The collective titles of the Education Acts, for example, can be included in Education Act; and, if that page becomes too long, we could split out Education Acts 1944 to 1992 (which would include all the Education Acts 1944 to 1990, and all the Education Acts 1944 to 1988, and so on) or something like that (I cannot remember if the collective title of 1992 is the most recent or the most inclusive one) which would be a convenient way of splitting the more recent group of British Acts from an international and historical article that has a much broader scope. James500 (talk) 22:37, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Given they seem to come in groups, it could be worth doing headings for each group, with a table beneath laying them out? As a simple example using the ones listed above:

Education Acts

Collective title	Constituent parts
Education Acts 1944 to 1990	Education Acts 1944 to 1988 Education (Student Loans) Act 1990
Education Acts 1944 to 1991	Education Acts 1944 to 1988 School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act 1991
Education Acts 1944 to 1992	Education Acts 1944 to 1990 School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act 1991 Further and Higher Education Act 1992

My main concern with only including the 'final form' of each collective title is that that won't be helpful if trying to interpret historic legislation, and we also run into the issue of WP:OR if we start expanding them out, as in many cases we would be grouping together Acts that were never all in force at the same time. Theknightwho (talk) 02:09, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]