Talk:2024 Venezuelan presidential election

Endorsements

This article is such a mess it's hard to know where to focus attention. Some of the background is such gibberish I am loathe to try to fix it.

The Endorsements section is never going to be cleaned up; what should be done with it? Send it to a sub-article? Reduce it to only the two main candidates? Remove anything not cited or notable? Where to start ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:10, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

If you look at US elections, we have whole articles dedicated to which celebrities have shown support for which candidates. How Hollywood do we want to cover Venezuelan elections? We already have articles for the primaries, why not send it to a sub-article and see if it ever gets improved. Kingsif (talk) 23:33, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

I am out of my league on this; I tried back in May with no luck, and just want the ugly to go away :) I don't like working on messy articles, and pretty soon, I give up. If I ruled the world, we would disallow primary sources, and only mention the very notable per secondary sources. I leave the decision to others! But less is more. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:44, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: I don't think that ignoring the minor candidates makes sense; they are still a notable part of the election. Personally, if someone is willing to do the work, I would propose heavily condensing the endorsements into prose text for each candidate, limiting to a small handful of the most notable endorsements in each case. E.g. a paragraph each for Maduro and Gonzalez, and 1-2 paragraphs for the others. Probably if someone want to do this, better first ping the main (pingable, i.e. non-IP) editors if it's not too difficult to trace who they are. On the other hand, as per Kingsif, allowing less detail on a VE election versus a US election would be rather biased. And other stuff exists, such as the incredibly fascinating Category:Lists of diplomatic visits by heads of state. And after all, WP:NOTPAPER. Boud (talk) 23:50, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Boud your suggestions for a rewrite is how it should happen, but I don't know anyone who might undertake that work. The content was mostly built by Ballers1919; perhaps they can be convinced. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:59, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Maybe if the situation improves (!), the capacity of editors who care about presenting Venezuelan politics will. Kingsif (talk) 02:49, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

The CNE results are fake: source needed to say the obvious

This is already circulating on the Fediverse, but it's clear in the official ALBA/CNE results CNE announced Nicolás Maduro Moros' victory with 51.20% (Q128211222) that the CNE counts are an extremely surprising coincidence:

echo 5150092 4445978 462704 | awk '{t=$1+$2+$3; printf("%.5f %.5f %.5f\n",100*$1/t,100*$2/t,100*$3/t)}'

gives

51.20000 44.20000 4.60000

If you increase to 6-digit precision you get

51.199997 44.199999 4.600004

This is reminiscent of Matthew Robertson's detection of faked data inOrgan harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China#Data on voluntary organ donations.

In any case, we need external WP:RS to comment on this. For the moment we are only allowed to do elementary arithmetic, which includes rounding. Boud (talk) 16:55, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

This is nothing new in chavismo elections; all sources who might comment already know how it works, and are probably waiting for the OAS statement today. It's surprising to see the Carter Center speak plainly for the first time, [1] [2][3] so others may be willing to provide, this time, the cited content you seek. The big change in this time versus others is that the PUD gathered the evidence. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:15, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Some faked data are more equal than others. If we consider the chance of .x0000 in all three cases, that's a chance of about 1 in 10000 cubed, i.e. 1 in a trillion (10^{12}). Anyway, let's see if any WP:RS consider a 1 in a trillion coincidence to be suspicious. Boud (talk) 17:37, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

@Boud Hey, i don't work on statistics, but i passed the university course.

I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be "cubed". Since, if two of the results are exact, the third one would also be. So i think the chance of that coincidence should be squared.

Also, some of the percentages remain exact if you add one vote, but it doesn't if you add two. So i think we should assume it has the accuracy of two votes, not one. So, 1 in 5000

It still results in a ridiculous coincidence of one in 25 million, so the point still stands.

Yes, that might sound pedantic. But i think that, when using statistics to disprove a lie, we should give the liar the most room possible.

For the record: I'm not saying that the election is false. I'm saying that these numbers are very probably derived from a simple calculation and don't reflect the exact amount of votes. They might still be accurate, although rough, estimations. 2804:14D:8084:8DC9:A0E8:DFFE:B762:EA5 (talk) 19:10, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree that my initial estimate was wrong. Depending on what interface you're using to read here, you might not have noticed my use of {{s}} to strike out my earlier calculation. I agree that the three numbers are constrained together, so 10^{-12} is wrong, and 10^{-8} is closer. The values for M and G, respectively, from 5145063 to 5155122, and from 4440949 to 4451008, would, depending on the specific method of rounding, would round to 51.2% and 44.2%. That makes 10059 and 10059 values that would have rounded to the stated values. Depending on the rounding method, these could be reduced by something like 1 or 2. So I would estimate slightly below 10^{-8}, something close to 9.88x10^{-9}.

If the vote counts are derived from the percentages, then that would imply that not only has the CNE published misleading numbers that were misinterpreted by most people as claims for the actual vote counts, but that it has not published any counts at all. Again, that last inference is something we can only use if it's WP:RS published. Boud (talk) 19:31, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

I did some numerical checks with two different reasonable assumptions on the a priori statistical distributions from which the percentages of votes would have been drawn; these confirm that the probability is about 10^{-8}. This only qualifies for this talk page as a sanity check, of course. Boud (talk) 11:13, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

@Boud: Here and here you can find some media sources noting how the CNE results are clearly artificial and invented by the regime. You may use these sources to edit this article and comment on that abnormality. Potatín5 (talk) 17:52, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Excellent! (Edit to previous WP:OR estimate: one of the three values is constrained by the others, so the chance is 1 in 10^8, i.e. 1 in 100 million.) Boud (talk) 18:09, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Boud and here's a high quality English language source:

• Applebaum, Anne (31 July 2024). "Venezuela's Dictator Can't Even Lie Well". The Atlantic. Retrieved 31 July 2024. In the hours after the polls closed, much of the international media had refrained from stating the obvious. "BREAKING:," the Associated Press tweeted on Monday. "Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro is declared the winner in the presidential election amid opposition claims of irregularities." But by Tuesday morning, it was absolutely clear that the election was not merely irregular or tainted or disputed: The election had been stolen.

You can request if at WP:RX, or subscribe to Apple News (well worth the monthly fee, it's where I'm getting almost everything), or email me and I'll send a copy. It comes as close as anything I've seen to calling it outright. Sorry I'm taking so long and so many edits on everything - my internet provider has gone bonkers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:27, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia I don't see where it mentions the decimal place zeros. The closest I see is sloppiness of the regime, which has so far not produced a full set of electoral statistics. Instead, Maduro has made ludicrous claims of victory, which doesn't mention the issue. Boud (talk) 18:52, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Boud, correct, The Atlantic does not address the decimal issue. Your section heading here is "need a source to say the obvious", which Applebaum does. And she gives yet another source that gathered the tally sheets and made them public, agreeing with PUD, disagreeing with CNE, which has made nothing public. On the decimal/precision issue, remember this is almost the same as what happened the first time the Carter Center turned a blind eye-- in past elections, it was no coincidence that a large number of voting tables had the exact same vote tally, as votes for the opposition were apparently capped at a set number. That the Carter Center has suddenly changed their tune on Venezuela is huge, even if they didn't quite "say the obvious". In the past, even though the statistical unlikelihood of so many voting tables having the exact same number of (low) votes against Maduro was known and stated,[4] that was ignored. "Carter is a man of peace" who didn't want to rock the boat? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:53, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Percentages

@Boud: i don't mind presenting the digits but i don't like that it is italic

@Number 57: could you provide a solution Braganza (talk) 10:36, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

@Braganza: If it's just the italics you object to, then we need a technical solution. Either add something to {{election results}}, which probably can't be done quickly, or if it's acceptable, maybe we could make a temporary fork with a quick hack while waiting for a proper solution? e.g. {{election results five decimal place percentages}}?

(Just to clarify to people who are not following this: I reverted this edit because the ALBA source CNE announced Nicolás Maduro Moros' victory with 51.20% (Q128211222) for the CNE values states these vote counts, and we have two sources, cited in the table footnote - How can looking at decimal places show fraud in Venezuela? (Q128211710) and The crude mathematical calculation in the official information increases suspicions about the manipulation of the election in Venezuela (Q128212016) - that state that the coincidence of the percentages being of the form ab.c0000%, de.f0000%, and g.h0000% is a notable characteristic of the official data.) Boud (talk) 10:44, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

i think multiple decimal place percentages might be needed, for example in the 2019 European Parliament election in Greece MeRA25 fell just 20ish votes below the threshold and is thus listed as 3.00% Braganza (talk) 10:49, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

The multiple decimal places isn't needed in the results table – mentioning it in the prose above the results table is enough IMO. Number 57 15:33, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

On the contrary, I think the multiple decimal places are needed, as the statistically improbable precision is precisely why people are rejecting the CNE's results as fraudulent. Sceptre (talk) 19:46, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

They are there, directly above the table, where the improbability is explained. Number 57 21:33, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

This relates to a long-term problem discussed in the essay WP:ROGD. While readers should read the prose, some will just look at infoboxes or tables without reading further, and not bother looking at references or footnotes. Effectively, there is no clear consensus about whether or not we should take the risk of presenting unreliable OGD in a way in which there's a high risk of people taking the unreliable data seriously; in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was broad consensus to include the full range from reliable to unreliable data. Whatever consensus emerges here for this specific case will be one micro-datum for possible guidelines for the wider WP:ROGD question (which is going to be increasingly important as more open government data becomes available). Boud (talk) 21:53, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Section ordering

Should the Results section be listed first? David O. Johnson (talk) 22:35, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

NO; it moves ahead information that is not explained until later, and it's not "the most important information". We should follow a logical order, and not start talking about vote tallies that are now explained later. Also, if sections are re-arranged like this, that necessitates going back and rejigging a lot of wikilinks and moving text around to make the content flow. I can't see any really good reason for moving these sections.

(While we're here, similarly, the See also section should not be a farm of items that won't ever be added to the article, and Elon Musk is unlikely to be added to this article.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:38, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Disagree. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 22:41, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

I think it makes more sense to list the Results later in the section, as it helps provide context. David O. Johnson (talk) 22:43, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

IMO our readers are clever enough to understand that results mean results ... and most of them come to the page for that.

I do agree we can provide more context. That can be done easily by adding one or two sentences at the start of the Results section (e.g. Maduro/CNE didn’t release detail tallies few days after the election while PUD released ...) Also the page is getting very long and I don't think it's a good idea to have everyone scroll a long way to get the information they want. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 22:51, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

We could split the Polling section into a new article. Maybe the Endorsements section, too. David O. Johnson (talk) 23:32, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

I’m not saying that we want a short article ... --Dustfreeworld (talk) 23:53, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

I already split the polling article to Polls in Venezuela; it has been shortened already by about 60%.

There are two logical problems with the chronology and emphasis in the structure (the idea to put results first) and the lead. The length is not a problem; the absence of understanding that neither the vote counts nor the decimals matter in the big picture is. I hope editors opining are reading sources beyond those freely available (there are scores of sources covering my point, but many are in Spanish) and in understanding that the significance here is not in the decimals or the results, neither of which will matter a wit to the outcome. The significance is in what was done to demonstrate to the world how the vote has always been manipulated-- recognizing, organizing, and taking the steps to assure that the actas would to be witnessed, saved, and made public. The significance is the process-- not the vote count-- which has historically been ignored and manipulated. There have always been statistical analyses showing fraud. Machado and team had the foresight to put an army of witnesses in place and gather all the actas, because statistical analyses have always shown issues with the tallies, and because there has never been true vote observers given full acesss, and the results won't matter a wit to whether Maduro will respect the vote-- that is the significant story, reiterated in source after source after source (while we have two sources that discuss the decimals, yet we're highlighting them in the lead, and placing the results before the important chronology). The forest is being missed for the trees here. The next step, already under way, is that Maduro will have his TSJ short-circuit the CNE process and review the votes in private, and then have them declare victory. Read the sources. [5] [6] and many many more. All of this was well known in advance, as it has been this way through many elections: the single difference this time is that the actas were preserved by an army of witnesses who are now being detained. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:22, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Mostly disagree. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 02:56, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Election articles are typically ordered chronologically; having the results section first would not make sense IMO. Number 57 23:20, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps won’t make sense to editors, but would make sense to most readers. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 23:27, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

I think that is probably your personal preference, but I would avoid making claims about readers as a whole. As a reader of articles, I prefer to read articles that are in chronological order; I find biographies where editors split up details into topic rather than chronology harder to follow. Number 57 23:33, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

No, it’s not my personal preference. I remember reading that studies showed that few people read the whole article. Most of them will just find the information they need by jumping to the section they want directly (through the headings listed in Contents), i.e., they don’t read “chronologically”. Perhaps you are one of those who are more patient I would say. Nvm. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 23:41, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Since that is true, then those who don't care to read the whole article can find the results whether they are at the top or bottom of the article. Those who do care to read the whole article need to get a solid grasp of the relevant story here, which is not to be found either in vote tallies or decimals. It was the journey, not the destination. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:24, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Disagree. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 02:56, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Panamanian election in See also

Why is 1989 Panamanian general election listed in See also? The possibilities in Venezuela have little similarity to Panama, where the US had a long military presence and a geographical advantage. There have been long military analyses of how the geography of Venezuela does not permit easy intervention. So what is the connection supposed to be? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:51, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Disagree.

(edit conflict) Btw, that edit *doesn't* imply any support / oppositon of any type of intervention. Readers decide their views by themselves. So no speculation please. The reason for that edit is at WP:See also. Thanks. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 02:56, 2 August 2024 (UTC); --Dustfreeworld (talk) 03:28, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Could you explain why, so we could at least add a brief note as to why that item is included? (See WP:SEEALSO.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:20, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't directly know, as I didn't put it there, but reading the article I'm guessing it was put there as an example of a similar election where the opposition won in a landslide, causing the government to commit election fraud for their prefered candidate to win.

Taken directly from the 1989 Panamanian general election article: "An exit poll of 1,022 voters gave the opposition an overwhelming victory...The margin shocked [then ruler] Noriega...Suspecting that Noriega would never allow an honest vote, ADOC organized a count of results from election precincts before they were sent to district centers. As it turned out, Noriega's cronies had taken bogus tally sheets to the district centers in order to make it appear Duque had won in a landslide. On 9 May government-released results gave a clear-cut lead to Duque. By this time, however, the opposition's count was already out. It showed Endara winning in a landslide, with a nearly 3-to-1 lead over Duque. Opposition forces - as well as foreign observers and the clergy - thereupon claimed massive election irregularities."

To be frank, I don't know if this follows the Wikipedia policy regarding the See Also section as I am not super involved in that type of editing. However, I hope this helps! Best, Incognito melon (talk) 16:03, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Incognito melon. You read my mind :-) --Dustfreeworld (talk) 15:14, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

PVT

Parallel vote tabulation (PVT) is an extremely significant development in independent checks on elections, and it happens that the well-designed method of the Venezuelan elections (apparently this robust election method in Venezuela only started with Chavez, but I haven't checked this claim!) is well-suited to PVT. The only way to falsify election results when there is/are one or more teams doing PVT is to not publish an official record of the results down to the polling station level.

I'm not aware of any other PVTs for this election, but if there are, we should extend the section from singular PVT to plural PVTs. Boud (talk) 12:26, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Nice work! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:49, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

U.S. recognition of election result

Dustfreeworld could you explain the issue here? [7] The relevance that the US has spoken to who won the election, but has not formally recognized a president-elect while Brazil Colombia and Mexico attempt to negotiate with Maduro, is extreme, following on the Guiado affair, so we have to get this wording right. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:12, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

I’m not sure I understand what you mean. However, IMO the Washington Post does not necessarily has the “right wording”. The right wording is:

"Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election ... We congratulate Edmundo González Urrutia on his successful campaign. Now is the time for the Venezuelan parties to begin discussions on a respectful, peaceful transition in accordance with Venezuelan electoral law and the wishes of the Venezuelan people. We fully support the process of re-establishing democratic norms in Venezuela and stand ready to consider ways to bolster it jointly with our international partners.” [8]

The Washington Post wording seems somewhat overkill (and are you sure that Blinken won’t recognize González as president-elect tomorrow/next week/next month/...?) --Dustfreeworld (talk) 14:29, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Other sources specifically say Blinken did not recognize him as president-elect. No, it is not overkill, as the US is being intentionally cautious here because of the Guaido precedent, and leaving room for the left-leaning presidents to negotiate. I will come back with the other sources, which will take me some time to re-locate. WAPO and Blinken's wording is very clear; he is speaking to who got the most votes and in diplomatic terms, he has specifically refrained from recognizing a president as Peru did. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:33, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

I’m not saying WAPO is “wrong”. I’m just saying that we don’t need to stress that (esp. in Wikivoice) at this stage / at this point of time. Whatever. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 14:42, 2 August 2024 (UTC); --Dustfreeworld (talk) 15:11, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

We have two very high quality sources (both paywalled, so I've added quotes), and it is highly relevant following on how the Guaido matter unfolded. [9] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:51, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

PS, it’s good that you notice that what we wrote may affect the report of media; and that’s one of the reasons why I think we shouldn’t stress that now. Blinken didn’t say A, Blinken didn’t say B, Blinken didn’t say many things, are we going to have all that in the article? Anyway, I really don’t enjoy the process of “defending every edit”. Excuse me but I’m out. Thanks. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 14:59, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

The WSJ article was posted at 12:41 am on 2 August; my post was at 02:12 UTC, which is 10:12 pm EST on 1 August, if I have the math right. At any rate, this issue is not rocket science so the same wording may be coincidental; it's standard diplomacy, as they are leaving time for regional leaders to negotiate (and apparently more occupied with other matters). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:10, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Wall Street Journal[10] (which is paywalled, but says):

Blinken’s statement stopped short of calling González a president-elect, a diplomatic sleight of hand that leaves the possibility for Washington to step up its pressure further. But Blinken congratulated Gonzalez on a “successful campaign” and called for a “peaceful transition in accordance with Venezuelan electoral law and the wishes of the Venezuelan people.”

(And I note they published that after I wrote the "stopped short" words.) As WSJ says, this is a diplomatic sleight of hand, and an important one considering the Guaido history. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:37, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

PS, I suppose I could be flattered that the WSJ seems to have picked up my paraphrasing of WAPO, and will write to them about that, ahem, when I find time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:45, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Washington Post (also paywalled):[11]

Blinken did not say the United States was recognizing González as Venezuela’s president.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:03, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Update US status

With The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post explicitly saying Blinken did not recognize Gonzalez as president-elect, we now have The Guardian saying he did.

• On Thursday night, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, rejected the incumbent’s claims and recognised González as Venezuela’s president-elect. [12]

Feedback needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:38, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

KlayCax regarding this edit, The New York Times is paywalled and I can't see that article; could you please provide a quote to support your edit, to help understand why you preferenced their wording over both The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post? We are now saying something in WikiVoice that two high-quality sources disagree with. See discussion above. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:19, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

I have now accessed the NYT article, and it did not explicitly say that the US had declared Gonzalez president-elect. Like most of the other sources (except only The Guardian) it said that Blinken said Gonzalez had won the election.

The United States on Thursday night recognized Venezuela’s opposition presidential candidate, Edmundo González, as the winner of the country’s disputed election.

In diplomacy-speak, not the same thing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:31, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

And The Guardian seems to be backing off on the wording of the earlier article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:10, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

And another: Reuters

The announcement from Washington did not go beyond congratulating him for a "successful campaign," the closest the U.S. has come since Sunday's contested election to recognizing Gonzalez as the OPEC nation's new leader.

We are promoting dubious information now in the lead in WikiVoice, and there has been no response from KlayCax; I am removing the claim from the lead.[13] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:06, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Discrepancy between total number of votes and total number used for percentage calculations in sources

I noticed that the table with the CNE results in #Results announced by the CNE gives a total vote count of 10,058,774. This disagrees with the source at https://www.elespectador.com/mundo/elecciones-venezuela-2024/por-que-ver-estos-decimales-nos-ayudaria-a-hablar-de-un-fraude-en-venezuela/, which gives a total of 10.058.773 (one vote less than the Wiki article). Dividing the given votes for Maduro (5,150,092) by 10,058,774, the number in the current revision of the wiki page, works out to 0,511999971, which is not the 51,20000... to (many) decimal places as reported in multiple sources. I am struggling to find the source for the number in the wiki page, 10,058,773, which might be a transcription error (?) and undermines the claim of suspicious precision in the official data.

The sum of the votes in the source I linked above work out to 10,058,774 as well, but the calculations divide each candidate's votes by 10,058,773, which makes it all very confusing. So which is it? I need other editors to help me verify the exact numbers, because they just don't add up as it is. Also note that in the excerpt "Kiko Llaneras, writing for El País, estimated the chance of the coincidence as one in 100 million.[15]", the [15] ref points to El Espectador (the link I posted here) and not El País.

The ALBA link (https://www.albatcp.org/en/2024/07/29/cne-announced-nicolas-maduro-moros-victory-with-51-20/) which as I understand is a pro-Maduro source, also has numbers that sum to 10.058.774 (5,150,092 + 4,445,978 + 462,704), so where did the 10,058,773 figure come from? Am I missing something here? I've done and redone these calculations and can't find an explanation for the one vote discrepancy. Is it possible that the ALBA source has since changed the total votes by 1 in order to make the percentages less suspicious? An archive.org search for the page only yields a 31 July snapshot which shows the same exact numbers as the current one--CVDX (talk) 14:26, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand either how El Espectador came to be El Pais. I'm sorry I can't help on the number discrepancy because my internet connection is so out of whack. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:29, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Dividing the given votes for Maduro (5,150,092) by 10,058,774, the number in the current revision of the wiki page, works out to 0,511999971, which is not the 51,20000... to (many) decimal places as reported in multiple sources. There is a difference between rounding to 5 decimal places (in the percentage) versus rounding to more than 5 decimal places (7 in the fraction). Not all the sources explain this quite properly. 0.511999971 is 0.5120000 when rounded to 7 decimal places (as a fraction; or rounded to 51.20000 to 5 decimal places as a percentage), because 0.71 is closer to 1.0 than to 0.0. Rounding is not truncation; truncation would give 0.5119999.

The 3 in 10.058.773 in El Espectador is clearly an error in the writeup by El Espectador, since as you say, 5150092 + 4444978 + 462704 = 10058774; and the sum of three even numbers must be even, not odd (and the last digits give 2 + 8 + 4 = 14).

In our current text, we don't discuss the details of the El Espectador analysis, and I don't think we have to. The fact that they made a minor error is not significant; we're allowed to do elementary arithmetic corrections.

El Espectador came to be El Pais comes from Raro ver tantos ceros, ¿no? Según Kiki Llaneras, doctor en ingeniería que escribe en El País de España, ... It's El Spectador as a source that in part refers to El País. If we can find the El País source, we could add that too. There are two sentences attributed together to El Spectador in the #Results announced by the CNE section. Boud (talk) 14:59, 2 August 2024 (UTC) (clarify Boud (talk) 15:05, 2 August 2024 (UTC))

Still confused .. WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT -- if we are quoting El Espectador which is quoting El Pais, we have to use El Espectador in the citation ??? Am I missing something? I couldn't load the source ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:13, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the writeup @Boud, I think I get it now. However I think we need to make this more clear as (at least to me) it's pretty confusing to understand this truncation vs. rounding problem. If a reader (like me) does the calculations themselves it would seem the numbers are wrong. Or maybe I'm just a bit dense? Oh well. CVDX (talk) 15:15, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

I've changed the wording to reflect that it's El Espectador and not El País but wasn't able to find the EP source. CVDX (talk) 15:13, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

OK, I just did one minor change in the wording.

For the arithmetic, it will be easier to use fewer digits, but the reasoning is the same. Let's try rounding 1.9971 to two decimal places after the decimal point.

2.00 - 1.9971 = 0.0029

1.9971 - 1.99 = 0.0071

0.0029 is less than 0.0071.

So 1.9971 is closer to 2.00 than to 1.99. So rounding 1.9971 to two decimal places after the decimal point gives 2.00.

Hope that helps. Boud (talk) 16:15, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

FOUND: https://elpais.com/america/2024-08-02/quien-gano-en-venezuela-los-datos-de-la-oposicion-son-mas-verificables-que-los-oficiales.html SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:29, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

@Boud and CVDX: El Pais is a better source and not full of pop-ups ... can we switch back now that it's found ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:30, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia Great find! They also do a great job of explaining what I was confused about there's even a table. we should add this source ASAP CVDX (talk) 18:53, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Glad to hear that (I must confess that I happened upon it while looking for something else, so it's not easy to find :) I'm sorry I haven't been following this portion closely; I've been barely able to keep up with the new content, and know this section is in the capable hands of Boud and you! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:19, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

No problem, thanks a lot for all the help in improving the article. CVDX (talk) 23:31, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Great that you found the El Pais ref. But it's not trivial to use - the author made a an error in estimating the probability as 1/1000 squared instead of 1/10000 squared, and for us to override that would be tricky, since probability is beyond just arithmetic. On the other hand, Terry Tao's blog post should be enough to justify overriding that error. I'm working on an update ... Boud (talk) 21:08, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

@Boud, thanks for the effort in clearing up the wording on the rounding debacle. However, I feel like the #Sequences of zeros... heading could be moved to or further paraphrased in the Results section; It is the main rationale sources use to discredit the CNE results as fraudulent, and has more to do, in my view, with results than the conduct of the electoral process itself, which is the subject of the #Conduct and irregularities section

Just out of curiosity is there a specific WP policy regarding the correction/supplantation of source data? CVDX (talk) 23:31, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I can see arguments either way: keep it in the #Conduct and irregularities versus shift it to #Results. So no objections from me either way.

Just out of ... WP:NOR says that we cannot make our own changes to source information, except for WP:CALC, basic arithmetic. Minor uncontroversial corrections could be accepted, if there's no risk of them counting as WP:OR. Moreover, it says that we cannot draw conclusions from that data, except if it's just basic arithmetic. The dividing line between summarising versus adding original interpretation is sometimes fuzzy, but you can ask at the talk page there if advice is needed. But qualitative information in the encyclopedic sense differs quantitative (numerical) data. "Bloggs was a significant leader of Joe Organisation" is qualitative information that be self-falsifying; but "2+2=5" is quantitative information that is obviously wrong, even if it's stated by a reliable source.

For data (in the sense of numbers), we only have examples of actual practice, not a real guideline, regarding open government data (OGD) in general, where the two well-established cases are election OGD and the COVID-19 pandemic OGD (for some countries the COVID-19 OGD is highly dubious for purely statistical reasons; see the refs at WP:ROGD). The essay WP:ROGD describes the issue, but it's nowhere near a "guideline" or "policy", and it doesn't mention the issue of correcting/supplanting source data - it's only about the difficult question of how to handle OGD when its reliability is dubious. Boud (talk) 00:20, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Article organization planning

In terms of how to structure and organize and focus this article (as it approaches 9,000 words of readable prose), where to cut and where to expand, just noting here that Maduro seems to be in for the long haul, which would mean we are eventually going to have some other sub-article.

We already have this article saying more than 1,000 are imprisoned, and with poll watchers and protesters targeted, you can see on Instagram how that is going down, and today we have:

• Maduro is labeling protesters as terrorists and denying the right to a public defense: https://www.infobae.com/venezuela/2024/08/02/el-regimen-de-venezuela-prohibio-la-defensa-privada-y-acusa-de-terrorismo-a-los-detenidos-en-las-protestas-contra-el-fraude-de-maduro/
• And, he has ordered rehabilitation of two prisons to be ready in 15 days to house those arrested: https://eldiario.com/2024/08/01/carceles-de-tocuyito-y-tocoron-detenidos-protestas/

As I said above, the election results are unlikely to determine the outcome. I'm not suggesting this new content necessarily be added here, but think we might want to start discussing where to trim or what new article(s) to start. The 2024 Venezuelan protests article is a mess, not well tended or developed, and "protests" don't encompass the full picture of what is happening. I would cut a lot of the pre-election bulky tables from here, but so far, others have disagreed with that. At 9,000 words, what ideas are there for "what next"? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:34, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Boud while you have written most of the statistical vote analysis, I have focused on the actas and the process that went into gathering evidence. We now have numerous sources describing fraud, so it's a notable topic. How would you feel about a spinoff of a lot of this content to 2024 Venezuelan electoral fraud, with a summary back to here? It's a whole separate notable topic. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:20, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia As a matter of principle, OK by me. But first I'd like to integrate material here and catch up. Boud (talk) 20:54, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

No hurry -- just planning and trying to keep us all on the same page as to how we will handle length as it grows. Let me know when you think we're ready. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:32, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia, @Boud, we really need to think about this as the article gets larger and the news keep on happening. To me, the obvious candidates for splitting/summarizing are #Conduct and irregularities #Reactions, #Aftermath and sections of #Electoral process

This election has caused many more sources and Wikipedians to look into the Venezuelan electoral process; I think the #Electoral process section is already overshadowing Elections in Venezuela#Polling procedure in terms of quality -- and I also believe the lead does a far better job of summarizing the process, so I propose somehow merging them and keeping the prose in this article more focused on aspects of this particular election. CVDX (talk) 23:51, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

@Boud, CVDX, Dustfreeworld, and Newslinger: there is still so much more to write; time to think about what to split. We have several proposals above:

1. 2024 Venezuelan electoral fraud allegations ... or make that Conduct and irregularities, and roll in the data fraud along with the other conduct stuff?
2. Something for Aftermath (how to name) that is more than protests ... there is much more to write, it's generally repression and human rights violations, but can't name it that.
3. CVDX wants to split off Electoral process, but I'd really like to keep all of the process stuff here, as that is needed to understand the fraud.
4. Split off all of the Polling ? -- that would go a long ways towards shortening the article, so that if we come up with a new Aftermath (name?) article, that will bring this article WP:SIZE within range, while keeping all the process and fraud here.
5. And then there's Endorsements-- just an all-round mess ...

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:35, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, forgot Wilfredor. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:35, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

And Kingsif; where are you? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:48, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

I think splitting out polling and endorsements - basically, anything that's "in the run-up to the election" can either get its own article or be part of the primaries articles, probably. Summarise here, briefly. Aftermath might need a series of its own articles, to be fair, which could also solve the naming issue. Kingsif (talk) 00:55, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

See this discussion here in relation to Talk:Venezuelan presidential crisis#Requested move 1 August 2024; if we do something like all of the Fraud and Aftermath stuff in a Crisis-type name, we can keep all the pre-election and election together here ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:04, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

2024 Venezuelan democratic crisis? FWIW, fraud is definitely the word of choice. Kingsif (talk) 01:28, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't know about 2024 democratic crisis; it implies that Venezuela was a democracy before 2024. Fraud has been the thing since Jimmy Carter skeedaddled outta there as fast as he could after the 2004 Venezuelan recall referendum; he didn't see then the same things as now, so those things became institutionalized until they were stopped by the plan to gather the actas. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:36, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Even a "crisis" name is hard. 2024 Venezuelan crisis is, like, which bit. But it's not just about the presidency. Constitutional crisis suggests that democratic process might be listened to. I'd opt for more generic if unsure. Kingsif (talk) 01:46, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

2024 Venezuelan political situation, per Reuters: Panama's proposed Summit. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:01, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Disgustingly generic... why not! Kingsif (talk) 02:08, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe Aftermath of the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election? A bit long I suppose, but it works.

I think there is merit in @Kingsif's suggestion of splitting out polling, endorsements and generally things that have to do with the run-up to the election. CVDX (talk) 15:30, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

1. I like the idea of splitting out fraud allegations (which includes a lot of the content currently in #Results), and #Conduct and irregularities as well to something like 2024 Venezuelan electoral fraud (allegations?). But my preferred name would be Conduct of the 2024 Venezuelan elections, which is more inclusive.

2. Why not Aftermath to the 2024 Venezuelan election?

3. Yeah, I've changed my mind, the content in #Electoral process is pretty relevant to the article, and all we can do is trim it -- although it seems to have been very trimmed already. However I still think we could transclude/copyedit some of the content in this page to Elections in Venezuela#Polling procedure, which could be renamed #Electoral process. AFAIK elections have worked like this in Venezuela for a long time (need to research that though).

4 and 5. I'm open to @Kingsif's suggestion of splitting off #Endorsements and #Polling, although #Endorsements seems to me like a more likely candidate to being kept in this article, it just needs organization.

CVDX (talk) 15:44, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Infobox Results

Hello, I wanted to start a discussion on the results that the infobox displays. I understand that the PUD results are backed up by stronger evidence compared to the CNE results, and I do want to preface this by stating that I have no preference either way but rather that I wanted to have a discussion on the best approach.

To the best of my understanding, fraudulent (albeit officially recognized by the state) results are the ones Wikipedia tend to use for the infobox. For example the 1988 Mexican general election, which has the PRI candidate winning despite also recognizing "The elections were widely considered to have been fraudulent, with Salinas de Gortari and the PRI resorting to electoral tampering to remain in power." Same with the 1927 Liberian general election, described as "the most rigged ever." As well as with the 2020 Belarusian presidential election, similarly marred with fraud claims. Ornithoptera (talk) 17:42, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

We aren't obligated to add anything to any infobox; why not just leave them out entirely? This provides an apt example of times that infobox parameters aren't useful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:22, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Is there any chance we could add both results? One infobox for the PUD and another for the CNE results? Microplastic Consumer (talk) 13:46, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

@Microplastic Consumer I would support this setup, but we need someone more knowledgeable in MediaWiki to figure out its feasibility. CVDX (talk) 23:52, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Terence Tao blogpost

Mathematician Terence Tao, considered one of the greatest living mathematicians (ex), just published a mathematical analysis (Bayesian statistics) on whether the election was manipulated. He supports the conclusion that the election was likely tampered with.

[14] It's a blog post, but it's from a credible figure, so possibly worth noting as an expert opinion.

I can't edit the article as an unconfirmed user, but recommend someone add it in. seefooddiet (talk) 18:06, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't disagree with adding it per WP:SPS, but defer to Boud, who has written most of that content; separately, I am thinking we need a sub-article -- see #Article organization planning. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:17, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Terry Tao is definitely a notable mathematician and his Bayesian analysis is something that I was vaguely thinking of doing, though I'm happy for other people like him to do most of the work. I'm looking at it ... Boud (talk) 20:45, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Heads up there's a typo: "occcurring" -> "occurring" seefooddiet (talk) 22:02, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Got that, thx, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:18, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Map for González recognition?

Hi everyone! I hope you are doing great. You know, I was wondering whether it is appropriate to add a map with the colored countries that recognize González (it happened with Guaidó) -- They are, for now, Peru, the US and Argentina. Any thought? Thank you! CoryGlee (talk) 18:53, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

See International reactions to the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, where that work is housed. I'm fairly certain that everyone working here is too busy trying to keep up with the content to replicate information that some reliable sources are already gathering. I've already seen an image of that info somewhere, although I can't recall where-- maybe check the Spanish Wikipedia ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:16, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

CoryGlee see File:Edmundo González recognition map.svg ... but I do not advise using this map yet, as I think it misrepesents the US position (see #U.S. recognition of election result) -- all high-quality sources I have seen except one are quite clear that the US has not recognized Gonzalez as president, and the one that has (Guardian) has used that language in only one source and seems to be backing off. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:05, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

That is, although the map is "declared him as winner of the election", it seems to be misinterpreted as "recognized him as president-elect of Venezuela", and there's a subtle but importance difference there. And it's dated (eg Argentina should be blue). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:14, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia hi and thank you for following my question; yes, as you say, it's not updated nor is it correct. I think that we will be able to have a much better (accurate) map this coming week, with the pronunciation, formal pronunciation of many, including Argentina. Have a great Sunday. --CoryGlee (talk) 12:55, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Thx, CoryGlee; just to be sure we're on the same page ...

1. File:2024 Venezuelan presidential election recognition map.svg already shows the countries that have recognized winners of the election, so
2. I don't know what File:Edmundo González recognition map.svg is supposed to be showing different from that (in diplomatic terms, the US has not recognized him as president-elect as Peru and Argentina have), and
3. We may need a third map of those who have specifically recognized him as president-elect. But then, Peru and Argentina don't make for much of a map!

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:38, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia hi again, I think that we may face strong opposition with three maps. I am against the current map because it generalizes too many positions. Argentina's position is incomparable to Brazil's far softer. That self map should be reorganized and show more colors (it's possible), and distinguish stronger from softer positions. As for recognition map (the one which shows the Americas), we should be careful... The map on Guaidó recognition kept changing overtime and it created chaotic confusion. --CoryGlee (talk) 13:54, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Yep ... that's (partly) why I'm not a fan of expending our (limited) resources on this kind of work-- it's a timesink and distraction from writing the article, and somewhere out there on the internet, some news org has already done the map anyway. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:24, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree with @SandyGeorgia. My reasons are different though. I do not advise using that map yet per WP:NOTNEWS and WP:UNDUE. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 14:37, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

New CNE numbers?

In this edit and maybe some others, Braganza added info that apparently comes from this 404 URL, in which there is apparently a new (and bigger) set of numbers published by the CNE. Do we have any proper sources? 20:50, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

I get the impression from Instagram that Anonymous has gov't sources under semi-permanent attack, so ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:55, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

That's a Peruvian URL. Wayback can't get it either. Anonymous is surely not DDOS-ing all of the Latin-American media that could be seen as pro-Maduro... Boud (talk) 20:56, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Oops ... ignore me :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:58, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

If we don't have any sources, then we should revert. Boud (talk) 21:15, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

@Braganza: just adding another ping. Boud (talk) 21:16, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

"https://canaln.pe/internacionales/consejo-nacional-electoral-venezuela-ratifica-victoria-nicolas-maduro-n475552" not "https://canaln.pe/internacionales/internacionales/consejo-nacional-electoral-venezuela-ratifica-victoria-nicolas-maduro-n475552"

@Boud: Braganza (talk) 21:18, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

you had "/internacionales/internacionales" instead of "/internacionales" Braganza (talk) 21:19, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

That's what you put in the link. So let's see... Boud (talk) 21:28, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

for some reason the link is the footnote works for me, maybe some redirect thing? Braganza (talk) 21:32, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, it's fixed now :). Boud (talk) 22:17, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

The CNE results are still fake: same indicator of fraud

It has been noticed that, in the newer CNE results published in 2 August, the ratio of valid and invalid/blank votes to the total number of votes cast gives percentages with two decimal places followed by three zeros. For example, the ratio of the 12,335,884 valid votes to the 12,386,669 total votes was 99.59000%, and in the case of the 50,785 invalid/blank votes, the percentage in relation to the total votes was 0.41000%. This is the same indicator that, as in the previous CNE official results, these have also been artificially manipulated. Potatín5 (talk) 11:19, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

@Potatín5 and Hegsareta: Canal N does not give the 50785 invalid/blank count. What source gives that? Boud (talk) 14:01, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

OK, I found one ... Boud (talk) 14:04, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

As before: we can note the fact, but we can't say that it's unusual without an external source. Boud (talk) 14:16, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Polling expansion tag

User:Newslinger, per WP:SS and WP:SIZE, generalized polling content that was here was moved to Polls in Venezuela as this article is over 9,000 words; a hatnote is given at the top of the section. What else might be done to satisfy your concern? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:40, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

PS, some amount of the content (originally written here) was sourced to La Patilla, which had a fairly contentious RFC (see WP:RSP). And a good bit of it is generalized information that can be used in other articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:51, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi SandyGeorgia, sorry about the unclear placement of the {{Expand language}} tag. My focus wasn't on general polling information, but on missing polling data pertaining to this specific election. es:Anexo:Encuestas y sondeos de intención de voto para las elecciones presidenciales de Venezuela de 2024#Candidatos postulados lists a number of polls (conducted by reliable pollsters) that are absent from this page. While the details can be split into a separate election-specific page (e.g. Opinion polling for the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election), I believe English Wikipedia's coverage of the polling data should be more comprehensive than what this article has now. — Newslinger talk 15:35, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Newslinger ... Ah, I see ... it's not the text you wanted expanded or brought back, but you say there are actually polls missing ?? Please re-add then your tag whereever it's needed (I have no intention of trying to clean up those messy tables myself :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:10, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Electoral bulletin

Can we get a short explanation in the article of what an "electoral bulletin" is? It's mentioned without any context. David O. Johnson (talk) 23:54, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

I will try to work on that as I find time, but we are seriously strapped in this whole mess by having lost Venezuelan editors after the arb case ... I can't get to everything. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:50, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I can't find a link (either here on es.wiki); I think we'll have to resort to wiktionary or a dictionary definition:

• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bulletin
• https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bulletin#:~:text=Synonyms%20of%20bulletin-,1,%3A%20periodical

We haven't at all yet explained all the ways the CNE, TSJ etc are violating Venezuelan law regarding official notices that should be released by whom and by what time, etc, but I can't do that without the help of the missing Venezuelan editors, who better know their way around es.wikipedia. Somewhere on the Spanish Wikipedia the content probably exists. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:34, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I was wondering about that. Apparently the CNE was required to release the full results down to polling station/mesa level within 48 hours, so it's violated that law (at least). Boud (talk) 17:59, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

At least, and more, but I just can't keep up with all the content that needs to be added. And I have a very busy week ahead. And it's hard to know how to prioritize all the (still) missing content, as the repression and human rights violations are spiraling so fast; I have bookmarked now a couple dozen of sources I need to add. The bigger news coming out now is generally related to the repression and the bigger geopolitical alliances driving the Maduro position; the election results and the CNE/TSJ issue is kinda moot since the military is in charge anyway. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:51, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

For those who have time to catch up on the bigger geopolitical picture, The New York Times article listed in Further reading scratches the surface (power is shared by Maduro, Diosdado Cabello and Vladimir Padrino Lopez), so conflicting messages are often sent in any conflict; this article is more indepth and may be helpful for those with a long-term interest in the topic (protests and vote tallies are not going to be determining factors):

• Corrales, Javier (3 July 2020). "Authoritarian survival: why Maduro hasn't fallen" (PDF). Journal of Democracy. 31 (3): 39–53. doi:10.1353/jod.2020.0044. S2CID 226738491. ProQuest 2429461768. Archived (PDF) from the original on 30 September 2023.

These are also helpful for the big picture:

• https://thehill.com/latino/4808636-venezuela-election-fraud-maduro-brazil-mexico-columbia-china/
• https://worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/venezuela-maduro-military

There are better articles than those, but mostly in Spanish, which makes editing here slow-going. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:16, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

WikiData, Cite Q, CITEVAR

The use of Cite Q, WikiData is resulting in WP:CITEVAR issues (and outright errors) and making it hard to clean up citations. Some of the Cite Q sources have article titles italicized when they shouldn't be and most are lacking access-dates. Many use a variant style on author names. Many have no trans-title and overriding them here is difficult when the title isn't even given in the citation. And missing publishers. Not impressed by Cite Q and the work it's causing. I don't know how to override the faulty italicized titles, other than simply rewriting those citations entirely. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:19, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

{{cite Q}} is the only long-term viable way to reduce the amount of work duplication for different language Wikipedias and other Wikimedia wikis - and as well between different en.Wikipedia pages. If someone corrects a non-cite-Q citation on one Wikipedia page, then there's no automatic fix on other Wikipedia pages that use the same reference. So that person's correction is to some degree wasted - it does not automatically propagate to the other Wikipedia articles where it should also be corrected.

{{cite Q}} currently exists in the Wikipedias for 63 different languages. If I create or fix a Wikidata element for a reference for use in one of the Wikipedias, I see no point in requiring people in 62 other languages to have to retype all the bibliographic information, with all the parameters. You can rewrite some of the cite Q citations here if you really want to, but Wikipedia is fundamentally multi-lingual, so rewriting is only a short term hack.

You can add a comment at Template talk:Cite Q#Reminder for title-trans to remind other people that we hope that someone will implement title-trans, or you can find out how to do the fix and propose it in the appropriate module. We're all volunteers. Boud (talk) 17:23, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Do you know how to repair the articles titles that are in (faulty) italics ? Book titles are italicized, news articles are not (MOS:ITALICS, MOS:NOITALIC). I fiddled around at WikiData and found nothing, so I'm leaning towards rewriting the remaining faulty citations. Trans-title I can just add locally, but I haven't figured out how to override the coding or data input errors like faulty italics. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:44, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm not too familiar with that cite style (especially since it's not as easy to edit as wikicode, which is basically WYSIWYG), but I'll work on learning how to use it. David O. Johnson (talk) 18:59, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: I think I see what you mean.

Italicised title examples: Dalson Figueiredo Filho; Jose Antonio Gomez Duarte (pseudonym); Raphael Nishimura; Walter Mebane (28 July 2024), Estimating Vote Counts with Limited Electoral Integrity (PDF), Wikidata Q128304770, archived from the original (PDF) on 2 August 2024; Informe del Departamento para la Cooperación y Observación Electoral (DECO) de la Secretaría para el Fortalecimiento de la Democracia de la OEA sobre la elección presidencial de Venezuela para el Secretario General Luis Almagro (PDF) (in Spanish), Organization of American States, 30 July 2024, Wikidata Q128129159, archived from the original (PDF) on 30 July 2024; CNE announced Nicolás Maduro Moros' victory with 51.20%, ALBA, 29 July 2024, Wikidata Q128211222, archived from the original on 31 July 2024.

Non-italicised examples: Camilo Gómez Forero (31 July 2024). "¿Por qué ver estos decimales ayudaría a hablar de un fraude en Venezuela?". El Espectador (in Spanish). ISSN 0122-2856. Wikidata Q128211710. Archived from the original on 31 July 2024.; Patricia Torres; Tom Phillips; Tiago Rogero; Sam Jones (29 July 2024). "Venezuela on a knife-edge as opposition accuses Maduro of rigging election". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Wikidata Q128041868. Archived from the original on 29 July 2024.; "TSJ solicita al CNE consignar actas de escrutinios a nivel nacional y las actas de totalización". Efecto Cocuyo (in Spanish). 2 August 2024. Wikidata Q128435622. Archived from the original on 3 August 2024..

The nature of the elements are: Estimating Vote Counts with Limited Electoral Integrity (Q128304770) is a scholarly article (Q13442814); Report on the Venezuelan Presidential Election by the Department for Electoral Cooperation and Observation (DECO) of the OAS Secretariat for the Strengthening of Democracy for Secretary General Luis Almagro (Q128129159) is a report (Q10870555). To me this looks like a nuance where research articles and reports get italics for the title. As far as I know, {{cite Q}} mostly just feeds parameters through to the citation templates/modules, though I've only browsed a bit, so this is just an impression.

A case I don't understand: CNE announced Nicolás Maduro Moros' victory with 51.20% (Q128211222) is a news article (Q5707594), like the three examples I gave that are also a 'news article'. The other three 'news articles' have non-italic titles, but Q128211222 has an italics title. Maybe it's because the publisher is an international organization (Q484652)? Boud (talk) 23:59, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Boud Yep, those are some of the issues, and after many years of enforcing 2c as FAC Coordinator, they stand out like a sore thumb to me (and the missing publisher on another one is more serious -- we have to identify publishers at min!). Cite Q will cause inconsistent citations wherever it is used; standardization is a nice idea, but it's not how Wikipedia works (WP:CITEVAR) and WikiData can't just impose a citation style across the board. The only way to fix this here, I guess, is to rewrite the citations. Not gonna worry about it for now, but it's like fingernails on a chalkboard to me and I find they make working here much harder, because they invalidate ctrl-f when you're trying to find if a source has been used. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:29, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia I didn't check if it was you who converted "WaPo_Marudo_lost_election" to a non-Wikidata reference, but please try to remember to preserve the |archive-url, |archive-date parameters if you do these conversions - these were missing. The world wide web is volatile, and long-term archiving is crucial; archives also help for some people who get paywall blocks (these are browser-dependent) or for sources that block some geographical locations (many local US newspapers block all EU IPs rather than handle the GDPR; irrelevant for this article, but relevant for some others). Boud (talk) 10:35, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Boud ... So sorry about missing that piece. Yes, it was me because we were adding the content almost at the same time, so after I realized we had a duplicate, I tried to reconcile the two, but apparently failed to capture everything.

I know the utility of archive-url, but again, the problem with Cite Q is the parameters aren't visible in edit mode, so it's easy to miss pieces; to reconcile the refs, one has to have two windows open, and then hope you get it all; with my editing limitations, that's a lot of cut-and-paste from an ipad!

Do you know if there is a way we can just use the id= parameter on a cite template to add the WikiData code? That would give us the best of both worlds. I understand that problems of the nature seen here have persisted since the template was created and kept without consensus. Using it leaves WP:CITEVAR breaches that would prevent an article from reaching Featured article status until all were repaired, and as mentioned in previous discussions, can lead to more serious issues.

Also, I keep ref names short and sweet; the quotes are only required on ref names if there are spaces, so I avoid spaces and underscores and quote marks to keep ref names shorter and easier to work with. Sorry again for missing the archive url. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:26, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia In a different order to your points, firstly I have to say the same thing as the others: "Wow!" sorry to hear about your accident. :(

The May 2024 cite Q case where a book is apparently also published in a journal - since this doesn't have the element ID listed, it's hard to check the problem without searching.

Quotes on ref names: Quotation marks are preferred but optional if the only characters used are, so the quotes are optional but preferred. (My guesses for the reasons: it's more standard for parsers; it discourages people who put spaces into labels from writing them without quotes.)

Editing techniques: I always edit with multiple tabs and do not purely use the keyboard; I do in practice use the mouse as well, even though in principle pure-keyboard techniques are faster. So I empathise with it being more difficult to edit without having multiple windows or tabs. I've done a very few edits with my PinePhone and the only external device being a keyboard plugged in over the docking bar (though in "convergence" mode, with a keyboard + mouse + external monitor, editing on my phone is fine - the phone is just a GNU/Linux computer plus a mobile modem running a small GNU/Linux system). Anyway, I'm not trying to imply blame - as long as there's no edit war, different editors can complement each other (and not just compliment each other).

Finally, getting to the most practical question, {{citation}} says id id A unique identifier used where none of the specialized ones are applicable Line optional, so I guess it's an option open to editing consensus for a particular article whether it's acceptable to put a Wikidata ID in |id=. I've had a go on my user page sandbox-subsection and the template/module doesn't seem to issue any complaints, either in the format |id=Q128550264 or |id=Wikidata:Q128550264. Even if some people consider it bad style, it can serve as a temporary label so that an editor converting from cite Q to en.Wikipedia citation can leave the Wikidata ID there for others to check and recover significant parameters from. I don't really see why anyone could object: if it's a fact that a source has a Wikidata entry, then that's a form of useful metadata about that source. Boud (talk) 16:28, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for all that Boud; I have to go out now so will look at your sandbox when home. I just hope you realize that my editing limitations cause unintended errors, and I really didn't notice I had left out the archive url. Will catch up later .. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:17, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Pollster reliability

I am trying to determine the reliability of firms that have conducted polls for this election. The most comprehensive credibility evaluation available appears to be the July 2024 C-Informa evaluation published by Medianálisis, which identifies Mass Behavior Research and Hinterlaces as questionable. This evaluation is covered in Polls in Venezuela § Credibility of polling firms.

The Spanish Wikipedia article on opinion polling for the election, es:Anexo:Encuestas y sondeos de intención de voto para las elecciones presidenciales de Venezuela de 2024, includes Mass Behavior Research as reliable and excludes Hinterlaces as unreliable. However, that article cites the credibility scores within a Twitter (X) post by Encuestometro – a public web survey operated by the Votoscopio electoral monitoring organization. I'm not familiar with the reliability standards of Spanish Wikipedia, but these survey results are unreliable on English Wikipedia, as they constitute user-generated content.

Absent other credibility data, the Mass Behavior Research and Hinterlaces polls should be removed from this page, per the C-Informa/Medianálisis evaluation. — Newslinger talk 21:19, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

This part is unsurprising; the policies and guidelines on es.wikipedia are considerably different (looser) than those of en.wikipedia, and I frequently find undesirable sources in content translated from there. I agree with removing both of them, Hinterlaces has long been known to be unreliable and is associated with chavismo, but because it has been the chavista go-to pollster for many years, you may get pushback. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:26, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Newslinger I forgot to mention that most of the non-reliable poll information was added by one now sock-blocked editor, and the sockmaster worked on elections for countries like Pakistan and others; possible COI or paid editing conforms with what the sources say about the intent of these polls to manipulate. Add that Wikipedia was censured in Venezuela beginning 27 July (after I first wrote about and deleted most of the non-RS polls a month earlier, 27 June, and other biased editing was addressed), a picture begins to emerge. Maybe the Signpost will look into censorship in Venezuela. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:49, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

That's useful meta-information for people like me who are more or less new to editing on the topic, thanks (some things - RfCs and so on - were pointed out to me on this talk page over the past week)! Boud (talk) 00:59, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Boud I've not yet scratched the surface ... none of what new editors are seeing in this election is new. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:00, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the context. After reviewing Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Venezuelan politics, I now have a better understanding of the editing history of this topic area. WikiBlame is a useful tool that searches the revision history to identify the editor who added or removed any piece of text to/from any page on Wikipedia, and can be used to determine the origin of questionable edits. — Newslinger talk 03:09, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Newslinger: Not always; I am constantly having to harp about WP:CWW, as content is frequently moved between articles without attribution, and one editor in the arbcase edited in such a way that almost every article they touched broke Who Wrote That? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:26, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I didn't know about the Who Wrote That? extension. That's a very nice tool and I'll be using it to research content additions. Thanks. — Newslinger talk 03:35, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

In most cases, it's much faster than WikiBlame. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:16, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Have you seen Polls in Venezuela#2024 presidential election? I worked on summarizing the pollster analysis from Efecto Cocuyo and it was moved there. The text may be of use to you; it's focused on the 2024 election, but many of the sources have info on the background of polling firms. CVDX (talk) 00:03, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Mass Behavior Research

Mass Behavior Research was launched fairly recently, with its first web publication dated 3 September 2023. The C-Informa fact-checking coalition assigned Mass Behavior Research a credibility score of 5.15 out of 10 (with 0 being least credible and 10 being most credible). C-Informa notes that Mass Behavior Research surveys have minimal coverage in news and social media. Mass Behavior Research lacks a website and a media spokesperson, publishes insufficient data, and has errors in its methodology. Based on this information, Mass Behavior Research polls should be removed from this page. — Newslinger talk 21:19, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Hinterlaces

Hinterlaces is an older firm, with its first web publication dated 6 August 2004. However, C-Informa assigned Hinterlaces a credibility score of 4.69 out of 10, which is even lower than that of Mass Behavior Research. Hinterlaces does not provide technical or sampling data for its polls, which brings the provenance of its data into question. Based on this information, Hinterlaces polls should be removed from this page. — Newslinger talk 21:19, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

 Done for this one. Thanks for the comment, It was allready remove in anothers wikis Wilfredor (talk) 19:57, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Decimal text duplicaton

Wilfredor the decimal issue was already in the article; Boud do you want to merge this content? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:52, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

PS, this could be another Cite Q issue; if one searches the article for the source, one does not fine it, since the Cite Q obscures it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:55, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

@Wilfredor and SandyGeorgia: I'll merge/resplit Claims of fraud with that, since they overlap. I would say the problem was that the Claims of fraud section is right now in Reactions, since I thought that Conduct and irregularities was limited to pre-28 July. However, it's clear that there's rough consensus for including 28-July+post-28-July events in Conduct and irregularities, so I'll merge the section into there. Boud (talk) 00:09, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Boud ... Great ... I finished some trimming. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:22, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

 Done Feel free to check. It's a bit risky having the no-citation sentence on what Twitter users think (BTW, the title consensus appears to be stick to Twitter, so it's a rather arbitrary question of style whether to write "X" or "Twitter"; we should probably see if there's an RfC or MOS guideline for that; personally, the ambiguity of X is a huge problem - I still use X on my desktop, and Wayland (protocol) only on my phone, though sooner or later I'll have to switch to Wayland). Since that particular subsection title does not say fraud, we could safely remove the sentence. The topic is sequences of zeros, and that's a fact no matter what the interpretation is.

Any objections to removing the uncited Twitter sentence? Boud (talk) 00:50, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Boud, I haven't looked at the merge yet, but I don't think we need the uncited sentence .. which reminds me ... re, your thanks in a section above, Wilfredor is an experienced Venezuelan editor, but most of them are now working over at es.wikipedia, and there is just too much to keep up with everywhere (duplication will happen), so thanks to YOU, Newslinger and others as it is so nice to have fresh blood and new eyes on this topic, post-arbcase. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:05, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm really just hoping that Maduro will fly off to exile in Istanbul so that I can stop editing on the topic and let others handle it ... :P Thanks for the compliment. :) Boud (talk) 01:16, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

That's not gonna happen,[15][16] and the opposition always knew that (I still have so many sources to add). Prisons are being rehabbed to handle thousands of arrests, and Maduro has stated he intends to imprison every last witness of the actas. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:22, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Now I'm just reading your messages, for some reason I'm not getting notifications, I'll check. Feel free to revert or edit what I add without any problem, I tried to read to avoid duplication but I missed it, sorry. Wilfredor (talk) 03:31, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Boud, queries and suggestions:

1. Re ===Sequences of zeros in the CNE values===, what would you think about "Decimal precision in the CNE values"?
2. There is other duplication in the "Results announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE)" section.
3. I think ===Other claims of fraud=== is actually material that belongs better back in the Reactions section, maybe with a different heading.
4. I like the write up, but then, my postgrad is such that I'm comfortable with the statistical analysis and terminology; I hope others are, as it doesn't strike me as too jargony.

Nice work so far, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:22, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia 1. The problem with "decimal precision" in the section title is that it doesn't point to the actual problem. There's nothing statistically unusual about writing something to high precision - with a vote count supposedly accurate to 1 in a few million, the percentage could reasonably be written to about 5 decimal places of precision if this were the abstract of a scientific paper, if there were a particular interest in obtaining highly accurate results. The coincidence is only the fact that there are sequences of four zeros.

2. yes, I know there's some duplication that needs cleaning up ...

3. If you want to switch the other claims of fraud back to the Reactions section, fine by me, go ahead.

4. There might be some ways to write things in a more popular way, but it still has to be technically correct, especially since I'm sure that Terry Tao doesn't want to take a legal risk: between studying the bayesian probability of a hypothesis of fraud and asserting fraud, there's a big legal difference (says me who is not a lawyer). Boud (talk) 01:36, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Great work, Boud; I'll work on #3 if you'll work on #2 ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:42, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Overlap still with reactions and fraud allegations

We have some fraud allegation reactions at the top of results (Levitsky, NYT), and others in reactions (Applebaum). Where do they fit best? I can see arguments for either way; on the one hand, they are Reactions, on the other hand, they provide a good preamble to Results. Where will readers be most likely to look for this info? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:56, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Moved Levitsky, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:00, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Lead

@HandIsNotNookls: You made this major change to the WP:LEAD in which you:

• introduced the minor claim that all other candidates recognized Maduro's victory, which I cannot see stated in either the NYT or BBC sources that follow the claim
• you removed the general consensus of the WP:RS that the CNE's results are falsified (since there essentially are no results from the CNE, just a tiny handful of numbers that appear to be arbitrarily chosen given the unusual 0000s in the percentages)
• you removed the reference to the Carter Center, which historically has generally supported the CNE's versions of Venezuelan poll results
• you removed the mention of several independent media that analysed the results, including that of The Washington Post, which got 67%/30% for Gonzalez/Maduro based on 97% of the publicly known (online) tally sheets (which themselves constitute about 81% of the set of tally sheets) and checked the online scans against hundreds of the physical tally sheets
• you removed the current TOC limit.

This is why I reverted your edit.

While the content of the WP:LEAD is certainly open to changes, if you make any changes that are likely to be controversial, it would be best to propose the changes here. Please scroll up through this talk page, and look through the talk page archives, to see previous discussions. I suggest that you propose changes or explain concerns in this talk page section. Boud (talk) 10:27, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

The "all other candidates" statement is particularly problematic, considering the history of how the elections came to have a ballot where Maduro was featured 13 times and opposition parties were intervened to include pro-Maduro candidates. If the other problems mentioned by Boud were corrected, there were some improvements in HandIsNotNookis's rewrite; the flow was good, and some of those might be re-incorporated after discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:42, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Results announced by PUD

I don't know what the state results and graphic are based on, but they are inconsistent with the national results. Also, numbers in Barinas, Guarico, Lara, Miranda, Portuguesa, and Zulia do not add up. I suggest we change the state numbers to the ones on the website shown as the source. Philosopher Spock (talk) 19:20, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

@Philosopher Spock: I fixed the table. Please check if you see any remaining errors. If the opposition publish version 2, then this script should be usable to do the update by just changing the file name (as long as columns don't change) and copy/pasting.

It seems that someone who edited the PUD data here has numbers of "invalid" votes separate to the number of "null" votes, but Results of the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election: PUD version 1 (Q128342566) only has a column "VOTOS_NULOS". I think that these are often counted separately in elections: a blank vote is one with nothing written by the voter; an invalid vote is one with a cross written in the wrong place or rude words written by hand by the voter. In any case, I only see the "VOTOS_NULOS" column.

For the vertical bar graph, I've started a discussion at Commons, where you can follow up. Boud (talk) 21:46, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks guys, I will wait to see if there are another error after change the graphic information Wilfredor (talk) 22:05, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I think the totals are supposed to include the blank votes, though it doesn't matter much. Also, the opposition just published version 2. Philosopher Spock (talk) 05:20, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

I removed the graphic waiting for the corrections Wilfredor (talk) 10:56, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately Results of the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election: PUD version 2 (Q128634804) does not have the RE (registered voters column), so for the 541 extra tally sheets (I'm assuming none were removed), we don't have the registered voter counts. Version 1 line 1 of the csv file is ...,CENTRO,MESA,RE,VOTOS_VALIDOS,... while Version 2 line 1 is ...,CENTRO,MESA,VOTOS_VALIDOS,... (this is not a typo; the data lines also have 21 columns in V2 versus 22 columns in V1). I've updated the main table, because that's what more people will be interested in, but for the states table, we would have to remove the participation % column. What's better: keep v1 for the states table with the participation column? versus update to v2 for the states table with the participation column removed? Boud (talk) 17:25, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

I updated the states table to v2, except that the participation column is still for v1. There's a ^† in the table header and a note in the sourcing line that states this. Boud (talk) 23:12, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Mebane

I have done minimal cleanup on the addition of a Mebane primary source. The paper did not seem very polished, and we need to examine whether the WP:SPS threshold is met for this paper. I was out all day and am too tired to do more today, but I did at least remove the original research from the lead. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:26, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

I took a quick glance at scholar.google and found a number of conferences, working papers, UMich website, etc ... more checking to be done because WP:SPS calls for "work in the relevant field [that] has previously been published by reliable, independent publications". Notability isn't established at Walter Mebane; the main "independent" source is a press release. Out of time, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:42, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

And checking news.google, this is not promising. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:46, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree that although the concerning edit only added one adjective, strong, and added a source by a well-established electoral forensics statistics researcher, the new text risked giving the impression of switching from a news media level of verification to an academic level, especially since evidence can be interpreted to have a specific quantified meaning in the sense of model evidence. So the revert was correct.

At a very quick browse, the two paragraphs on the Mebane paper look fine.

As for Walter Mebane being notable, it's true that technically the article doesn't have media entries establishing notability, but he does appear to have a professorship; the fact that his article does not have the cv-like appearance of Wikipedia entries for many academics is circumstantial evidence that it's not an attempt at self-promotion (which is good, though it doesn't establish notability). I don't understand this is not promising regarding the Reuters article. He's quoted there as an expert. He's one of the two authors of a 2017 election forensics guide published by USAID; he's mentioned on this secondary academic type source; two of his publications are listed by electionlab.mit; he's mentioned by Smithsonian Magazine; there's also a mention in The Elephant, which seems to be a Kenyan news source that is itself not (yet) WP-notable. Anyway, I'll have a look through Mebane's working paper and see if the two paragraphs need some wording changes. The expression "probability of no fraud" almost certainly needs to be put in a proper context, where "no fraud" is properly defined. Boud (talk) 15:45, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Boud, I meant by "not promising" that his methodology may not be sound or well recognized -- but I have been in a hurry and didn't scrutinize closely -- leave it up to you. I'm not yet convinced we should include it (he's not Terrence Tao), as we are opening the door to all primary sources that follow (and there will be more). Also, I'm accustomed to viewing primary sources through the lens of WP:MEDRS, which you may decide doesn't apply here -- regardless, we may need to establish some criteria for inclusion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:04, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

You probably scanned too fast: Mebane's methods are fine; he's critical of 1BL, not 2BL. Mebane is well-established as an election forensics expert, Tao is not. Mebane's analysis is done with the benefit of decades of experience of studying elections and the empirical real-world data on how elections happen down to very concrete details. Tao does not have this experience (not as far as I know): his analysis just uses statistics plus some common sense.

I agree that the field of election forensics is much too little developed to apply the equivalent of WP:MEDRS blindly. However, it happens that the AltaVista PVT - of which Mebane is one of the four authors - is a case with a preregistered method, which is a step towards the direction of clinical medicine. Anyway, I need a moment to read through Mebane's paper ... Boud (talk) 16:30, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Good news; we now have an independent source. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:23, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

"Observers"

Considering the restrictions on "observers" according to reliable sources, could we set some criteria on inclusion of entries like this one by Braganza? I hope we're not intending to include all 600+ of Maduro's guest list. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:59, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

He is a minister and has an article, i think he is notable enough

i doubt all 600 are famous, is it known which countries they are from? Braganza (talk) 17:05, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Famous is not the same as notable; yes, it is likely that most of the 600 meet Wikipedia's criteria for notability. There are multiple problems with that addition. WP:UNDUE based on a primary source. And most of those 600 aren't "observers" in the real sense of the word. Did you read the secondary sources I linked to above? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:30, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Results map in the lead

This move of the PUD results map to the lead led to edit warring. I have undone it; please discuss. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:30, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

• I don't believe vote tallies or maps belong anywhere in the lead. Both sides claim to win – one claims a narrow win, the other claims a landslide. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:30, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

  IMO the edit war started by inexperienced user removing content without valid reason has stopped after I told them about WP:PRESERVE. I don’t know why you join the edit war if you think discussion is needed. Anyway.

  Currently the lead says:

  “Academics, news outlets and the opposition provided "strong evidence" according to The Guardian[9] to suggest that González won the election by a wide margin,[10][11] with the opposition releasing copies of official tally sheets collected by poll watchers from a majority of polling centers showing a landslide victory for González.[7][12][13][14] The government-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) announced falsified[15][16][17] results claiming a narrow Maduro victory on 29 July. The CNE's results were rejected by the Carter Center. Analyses by media sources including the Associated Press,[18] the Washington Post,[19] El Espectador,[16] and Infobae[17] found the results lacking credibility or statistically improbable.”

  What’s the problem to have image in the lead that illustrate the text, and showing the “strong evidence”? If CNE never has similar map, does that mean we should never include the map of PUD, which we described as “strong evidence” by RS?

  Even if the CNE results map is available in the future, I’m still not sure if we should have that included, as our lead is now describing it as “falsified” results. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 15:00, 7 August 2024 (UTC); --Dustfreeworld (talk) 16:37, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

  Putting results tables, data or maps from an unofficial source, while leaving out an official source, in the infobox or in an image in the lead is always going to be unusual and generate controversy and naturally lead to edit wars; discussing and gaining consensus saves everyone time and avoids agida. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:45, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you for effectively reminding people of WP:ROGD: it's still rough consensus for many articles that unreliable OGD has to be treated with an almost equivalent status to reliable OGD, though in reality, it's really under-discussed and is a TODO issue for the en.Wikipedia community. Anyway, for this article, we have a close to unprecedented case, so we are open to seeking consensus for this particular article. Moreover, WP:OTHERCONTENT means we can consider this article on its own merits (the merits of its sources). Whether that leads to similar editing consensus on other articles in similar situations will be seen later. Boud (talk) 16:56, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

  I don’t know of anything that’s “always going to be unusual and generate controversy and naturally lead to edit wars”, maybe that should be written to WP:BOLD. That’s your opinion anyway. Discussing and gaining consensus are good, though I don’t think they need to go along with edit war. Thanks. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 16:58, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

  DFW, we had an arbcase, and Venezuelan politics was nearly made a WP:CTOP; could we just proceed with enough caution that we will be left with time to actually build content rather than dealing with edits that are likely to generate controversy? As I'm trying to build content, I'm seeing unnecessary maintenance tags go on the article; I can certainly go work elsewhere if that is to be the environment here. And per WP:BRD, as soon as moving that map to the lead was disputed, it shoulda gone to talk then. Please remember we're all busy volunteers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:05, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

  “Unnecessary maintenance tags” are your opinion. Have you counted how many edits of mine that you have reverted? What I’m seeing is “unnecessary reverts”. I’m not going into detail with WP:BRD here, as we’re all busy volunteers. Leave it to those who are fond of policies.

  If we were “proceeding with enough caution”, I don’t think the US position from Miami Herald yesterday should be added now per WP:NOTNEWS and WP:CRYSTAL. It’s fine that we disagree, but just don’t say that I’m not proceeding with enough caution while you are when it’s not the case. Thanks. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:54, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

  Um, so I guess this is personal? All right. I believe that clarifying the US position is relevant-- particularly when the Miami Herald is quoting two State Department spokespersons. It's not CRYSTAL; it's a spokesperson speaking to them. Have you been able to access that article ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:04, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

  B.

  We’re all busy volunteers. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:08, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree with the suggestion to move map of PUD to the section Results announced by the PUD from the lead. If there are no results in the lead by CNE there shouldn't be of PUD either. PUD is not relevant authority to announce the winner, so their results should be in their own section as part of WP:PRESERVE Bottle for Bread (talk) 15:51, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

How about using {{switcher}} as on the Spanish-language version of this page to shift the maps to the lead? The reader would easily switch back and forth between the PUD and PNE versions. We could make the "all" option the default one to be as NPOV as possible, presenting both the evidence-free POV and the evidence-based POV together. Any objections? Boud (talk) 16:47, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

es.wikipedia doesn't have the same policies and guidelines as en.wikipedia and that infobox is dreadful ... it relies on hidden parameters, and our MOS tells us not to do that. Yes, I would oppose, as I don't agree with chunking up the infobox at all ... let readers actually read the article (novel idea, I know ... :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:50, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

PS, if we had a side-by-side map, with both CNE and PUD, we could use {{multiple image}} and then I wouldn't necessarily object to having them in the lead ... but since a map for CNE results isn't possible because they haven't provided that data, we can't get there from here. Maybe one side-by-side table of overall results would work, but I don't see what that adds; the content is in the lead, the results are disputed, and the outcome is not going to be based on vote tallies anyway (it never was). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:55, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

For a side-by-side map: I see nothing wrong with File:Venezuela_Estados.svg - that is the current result from the CNE. Boud (talk) 16:58, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

And probably all we'll get :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:06, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

I like the idea of the switcher template, maybe not in infobox, but just below it? And IMO the caption of the CNE results may contain the word “falsified” with citation. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:03, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

I don’t support side-by-side map in the infobox because the maps would be too small. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 19:21, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

I thought we were talking about the lead, not the infobox; the edit-warred map was not in the infobox -- it was below it. If it's just within content, maps don't have to be too small, because the multiple image template has a size setting. But Boud's point is that there is no CNE map to display anyway. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:25, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Just to clarify: my point is that showing File:Venezuela_Estados.svg as the CNE map is fully justified by all our sources. Whatever differences in policy and practice there are between es-wikipedia and en-wikipedia, their idea of using File:Venezuela_Estados.svg as the CNE map through {{switcher}} seems informative and justified by the sources. This is a situation where the lack of information is effectively a notable piece of information. I'm not fussy about if it should be in the infobox or below; having these maps somewhere in the lead with switcher would seem reasonable to me. We do have a CNE map to display - it just happens to show all states in grey. Boud (talk) 20:01, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

I leave it to you; as I've said too many times, I don't think that vote tallies are the main story here (they were always going to be ignored, always have been, nothing new except this time there is enough proof that the rest of the world finally tuned in), so I'm trying to focus on building other content. The purpose of this thread was to remind to use talk rather than edit warring, and that if we add one to the lead, we have to add the other. I don't care what is decided as long it's based on consensus. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:49, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

I’m afraid I can’t agree with your “purpose of this thread”. Nvm. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 21:23, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, I do hope I know why I started the thread :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:25, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Agree :) I’m happy as long as the PUD map is in the lead section. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 21:24, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

So I'll ask again, since now it appears that there may be consensus.

Are there any objections against shifting the maps to the infobox (edit: go under the infobox) as currently shown in my sandbox?

(Putting {{switcher}} outside of the infobox has a technical limitation, because the radio buttons are not contained within a neat box.) Boud (talk) 23:28, 7 August 2024 (UTC) (edit Boud (talk) 02:15, 8 August 2024 (UTC))

Confused; I hate ultra-long infoboxes, as they interfere with content, and was envisioning them as images below the infobox. We can move the Venezuelan politics sidebar elsewhere (eg Background). Because this election is so unique, I'd like to not expand the infobox or encourage filling of infobox parameters, so prefer a standalone image. Is that doable? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:47, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

OK, how about this version? It uses the generic {{infobox}} template, but it's independent of the election infobox, so in terms of html, it's not constrained to stick to the election infobox. It's standalone. Boud (talk) 02:15, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Much better. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:40, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Except why are we showing Guyana disputed territory on the map? It's territory controlled by Guyana and doesn't vote in Venezuela, and it's weird that we show it on the PUD map, but not the Maduro map, when Maduro is the one promoting the Guyana dispute (to distract from the Venezuela crisis). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:43, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Also, rather than use the generic infobox, why not just use {{Multiple image}} and place them vertical with a footer? One problem with infoboxes is that, once you add them, people start filling the parameters. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:58, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

I created this version 1239288553 that links to versions of the maps without Essequibo and uses {{stack}} instead of {{infobox}}. I tried {{multiple image}} but that needs image file names directly, not objects such as {{switcher}}. There do seem to be problems with {{stack}}, e.g. if I make my window narrow, the maps get partially obscured by the infobox.

I think that's risky, so I propose this version 1239289223 with the infobox template. OK to use this version 1239289223? Boud (talk) 13:02, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

No prob from me, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:14, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

 Done Boud (talk) 18:52, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

@Boud @Dustfreeworld @SandyGeorgia I like the idea of moving results to the lead now that the dust has settled, but why is this limited to the image? As there is no regional breakdown for the CNE results (giving the impression that there are no results), I think the current setup doesn't do the situation justice, as per WP:ROGD and WP:CTOP.

If we are going to show the unofficial PUD results in the lead we should show the CNE result as well, but there's nothing in the infobox. I'm in favor of somehow including both in the lead. Is the current setup because of a technical limitation with infoboxes?

I feel like as it stands now, the presentation isn't sufficiently WP:NPOV. Even if all the info regarding the controversy is in the text, at a glance it's not as obvious from a skim/infobox perspective. I think it would only work with a corresponding double results infobox of some sort.

CVDX (talk) 20:12, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

@CVDX: It looks like {{switcher}} can be used inside of {{infobox election}}! Have a look at my sandbox oldid 1239358710. I just did that rapidly as a proof-of-concept with the percentages: this is quite easy to do in terms of syntax; I put an extra space at the beginning of each line to make the nesting of curly brackets clearer, though that's not obligatory. @SandyGeorgia and Dustfreeworld: Any objections to using {{switcher}} in this way for the vote counts and percentages in the infobox (i.e. infobox election)? Repeat refs can be inserted there too. Putting the PUD data first and CNE second is justified by the overwhelming majority of the reliable sources. Readers would still have easy access to the CNE numbers, just slightly less prominently than the PUD ones. If there are no objections, anyone can easily do that edit without needing much tech skill. You can do this in a single line, e.g. |percentage1 = {{switcher|30%|per the PUD|51.2%|per the CNE}} if you're worried about mixing up nested curly brackets. Boud (talk) 20:47, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

I didn't know that was possible, but it would be ideal in my opinion. Show the PUD results first as most sources give more credit to them, keep the CNE results easily accessible under a radio button. The example in your sandbox looks great, but the "see all" option doesn't make much sense in this context, any way to remove it?

Let's see if we can find the consensus required to make this change.

Would it be possible to make the percentage changes contingent on the map change and vice versa? As in, make it so readers can choose to see the complete picture of one side's results or the other, instead of separate radio buttons for maps and percentages? CVDX (talk) 21:45, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

The "show all" button seems reasonable to me: some readers may want to look at both numbers simultaneously. As for removing it, it seems to be coded in the .css class "switcher-container", so individuals could avoid the "show all" button by creating a personal .css file. In other words, it's not easy to do for default readers.

I don't think that linking the switch between the {{infobox election}} and the {{infobox}} would be easy. In principle, we could have {{switcher}} at the outer level, and inside of it, put firstly the full {{infobox election}} (the actual infobox) and {{infobox}} (maps) for PUD; and secondly, another copy of the full {{infobox election}} (actual infobox) and {{infobox}} (maps) for CNE. But in that case, any undisputed parameters edited in one copy might be updated in one copy and not the other. Even worse, the "show all" button would give four boxes altogether (infobox, maps, infobox, maps). Technically, anything is possible, but some solutions are more sustainable and verifiable and convenient than others. What we do on this page might motivate people to think up new scripts to match this sort of situation. Boud (talk) 22:33, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

JNOJ1423 did some edits without discussing them here on the talk page, but to me they look consistent with rough consensus with the discussion here. I don't think a revert would be justified. Probably just a bit of reduction in the number of repeat links is needed, without going to the other extreme of underlinking, where the reader has to scan the whole article to find a clickable link. Boud (talk) 22:53, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Lost sources

While I was having computer problems last week, all the sources I had saved on Apple News went missing in my Saved Stories, so I'm going to have to scroll back days to recover; apologies for gaps in content I've been adding. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:54, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Charges and arrests of politicians

CVDX, would you mind if we trimmed and moved the Poder360-cited text to Superlano's article? I recall that you wanted that content because of the video, but videos of that and of the related issues are all over the internet, that sentence doesn't enhance the article, and that section has now been tagged as "too long" just as I'm trying to catch up and finish telling the rest of the story to establish the relevance of these arrests. I'd like to be able to trim that which is redundant or not part of which way these arrests are headed, but I remember you felt that sentence was important, so am hesitant to cut it without discussion. And somewhere I lost a source that says they intended to throw every single poll watching witness in prison, so still working on that whole thing, along with charges against Machado and Gonzales. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:56, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia No problem, I believe you're much more capable than me in making these judgments given your huge participation in this article. Moving it to Freddy Superlano will work just fine.

I'm also concerned about the length (currently 10394 words!), and am thinking of WP:SPLIT possibilities which I'll post here for everyone to sketch out together. CVDX (talk) 15:25, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

CVDX see discussions already at #Article organization planning; I wish we could keep as much of the actual election as possible intact, while figuring out a name for an Aftermath article ... I hate to lose everything in one place about the leadup to the fraud, particularly since the fraud tactics haven't ended yet. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:08, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

I've seen it and replied with my thoughts. CVDX (talk) 21:46, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Also, remember, we can still sort-of have everything in one place, it'll just be a summary, with less detail. Careful editing can hopefully make the article just as comprehensive as it is now. CVDX (talk) 21:50, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Superlano content trimmed, moved to Freddy Superlano, a good bit left because we haven't heard the end of this, but we've seen how it has played out before. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:47, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

---

Dustfreeworld, re this edit summary ("I added the tag because I think this subsection is too long when comparing to other subsections, and this may have chilling effects in RL. People may be frightened by all these. I understand that the arrests should be documented. Just that I don’t think it’s the main focus for now …") it is faster to use the talk page for discussions.

I'm not sure what "people may be frightened", but I (unfortunately) can assure you that this is not the first rodeo in Venezuela, and there is not anything in that section that is not well known to all Venezuelans who have lived under chavismo. Our duty is to report what reliable sources say, not hold hands, and there are hundreds of sources right now about the detentions of politicians, journalists, voting center witnesses, and random juveniles who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time -- precisely because the (usual) plan is to frighten. We serve no one by not reporting what scores and scores of reliable sources are documenting. This is well documented by every human rights org, and well known to Venezuelans and I could get to the relevance faster now that my internet is working again if I can focus on adding content for a bit. Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:43, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Um, of course I know that our duty is to report what RS say, but now we have that one or two subsections much long than the Protests subsection and making things unbalanced. That’s why the tags were added. (Actually the Protests section only becomes that short after I’ve rearranged some content, anyway I hope someone can expand it, perhaps by adding content from the sub-article). --Dustfreeworld (talk) 22:03, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

To clarify, I’m not saying we shouldn’t expand the part about arrests. I just mean maybe it can have its own article, so that it can be reduced to a summary in Aftermath. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 22:06, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

That's because we have a Protests sub-article, but not other sub-articles yet ... and as the content evolves, we will be better able to determine what the other sub-articles might be. It's not clear to me yet ... what troubles me about those tags is they encourage people to add content here instead of at the relevant sub-article, when there is one. Protests are fully developed elsewhere; the rest of the story is still developing. To keep this article within WP:SIZE limits, we don't need to add content here that is housed elsewhere already. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:45, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Endorsements section again

Dustfreeworld re this tag, I'm not sure what you are proposing. The section has been cleaned out as much possible to remove the non-notables, and everyone left there has to be included best I can tell. So what do you suggest is too long? Or to where do you suggest this content can be moved? As far as I know, we don't have a sub-article where it fits, endorsements are usually part of election articles and nothing comes to (my) mind as to how to deal with the whole mess. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:28, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Freedom House open letter

Putting this here while waiting for secondary sources to cover this wealth of material. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:46, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Useful article from AP

There's a good article from the Associated Press here that talks about how the opposition kept the actas: [17]. David O. Johnson (talk) 12:02, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

We already have most of that here, but can add any missing bits and augment with the AP citation, since it is freely available while Miami Herald is not. Thanks, David O. Johnson; I can't get to this today, in case someone else can. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:12, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Done here CVDX (talk) 16:03, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

List to tackle

I was out all day and came home to find a long list to tackle.

1. Why are we using WP:VENEZUELANALYSIS (not a reliable source)? As explained in the RFC, they lie; why are we promoting that?

   Removed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:25, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

2. The Carter Center content "not an independent source" is now in the article twice.

   In fact, the section "Audit of results" mostly duplicates "Transparency in vote reporting"

   Merged, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:25, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

3. The "Explanations" section appears actually to be "Turnout"

   Moved with results. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:25, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

4. The Smartmatic content seems excessively detailed in an already long article. Is everyone here aware that they have sued Wikipedians and that care should be taken? Can someone trim this content to three or four sentences?

   Trimmed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:26, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

5. When there are English-language sources, we should preference their use.

   Added, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:25, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure where to start on all of this after a long day, but I do notice User:David O. Johnson doing their best to keep up. We now have an 11,000 word article, and I don't understand a number of today's content additions. I will start in now and do what I can, but tired. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:52, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Done. So I added no new content today, and my list of sources to add approaches two dozen. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:26, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

More statistics

Boud, here's more for you. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:44, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

• Amaya, Sol; Jiménez, Sebastián; Razo, Jhasua (9 August 2024). "After Venezuela's contested presidential vote, experts say government results are a 'statistical improbability'". CNN. Retrieved 9 August 2024.

Shouldn't Edmundo González be placed first?

This is definitely controversial territory. But shouldn't González be placed first in the infobox?

Most reliable sources consider him the probable winner of the election. KlayCax (talk) 09:27, 9 August 2024 (UTC)