Talk:2011 Macedonian parliamentary election

Opinion polls

The section "Opinion polls" is confusing and maybe biased. The cited article [14] in "Dnevnik" does contain the data presented in this section and it references the agency "Rejting", however the website of "Rejting" gives different data. One should check http://www.rejting.com.mk/rejting-na-partii-vo-makedonija

I strongly oppose the inclusion of this section. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, but not a bookmaker or something else to predict the chances of the future outcome. So far I've seen similar predictions in the prelude of a major sports tournament with mentioning only the favored teams, without indicating any numbers.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 19:02, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

"Opinion polls" is a standard section in most election articles on Wikipedia. The data I have entered is sourced, it is simply untrue that they are not sourced from "Dnevnik". I just found out that the link was broken and fixed it. If you find any inconsistent data in any section, as you have pointed out, please feel free to fix and source. Please do not delete this section again.Crnorizec (talk) 03:12, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

P.S. I checked the "Rejting" site you are referring to: it is only a web-page for checking of public opinion, not a statistical poll. Crnorizec (talk) 03:15, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Seems like the outcomes you've listed are clearly biased by the participants in the election, or the content you have tends to an OR. All the figures are outcome of different statistics taken by different researchers in different points of time. So how this provide useful information about the reader and whom should I trust then? It's even better to put there more polls taken by one researcher, instead of adjusting the polls to be seemingly neutral.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:57, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a place for this kind of discussion, as per WP:AGF. I am only quoting articles from mainstream national media, regardless of their (alleged) political inclination. Please feel free to add your own sources if you think that these are biased in any way. The polls are important information because they demonstrate voter mood before and during the campaigns, and reflect possible voter swings correlated to the campaign and/or to other events. So, that's why it is a standard part of any election article in a civilized country. Please do your own research before you intervene in this article. Crnorizec (talk) 14:10, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a place for original researches as per WP:NOR, so if this one is, it should be removed immediately. And since you admitted above their alleged political inclination, the neutrality on Wikipedia should be maintained by inserting content referenced by independent sources. Thus matching biased researches is far from appropriate solution for the WP:POV problem and creates another one. So please note figures yielded of research performed by more independent rating agency, and I'll give up this discussion and even amend the section. Until then I don't think that the readers are so pleased to read biased opinion polls. Regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 14:37, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Regarding WP:NPOV, we cannot just scrap all opinion polls by generally alleging that they are biased. Even if some of them were, it will become obvious as they would stand out from the others. By citing more mainstream sources of statistical polls, we ensure the neutrality of the article. Furthermore, we cannot filter information by arbitrarily deciding who is independent or credible. For example, Dnevnik/Rejting had less than 2% error in the prediction of the outcome of the 2008 election, which was well within the statistical margin of error. Regarding WP:NOR, all sources are well documented, so this is not original research. Crnorizec (talk) 00:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I must agree on Dnevnik/Rejting and the figure you mentioned, but the margin in comparison with the last two is strangely different. So if Rejting is the most accurate and totally free of any bias, then for example Progres is surely not. And I don't think we could consider it a relevant poll, although it's well-sourced. Of course it's impossible all the polls to yield same prediction, but there is always a precise interval of the possible outcome of the election. Here it is too wide like saying "VMRO-DPMNE will win the election or SDSM will do it so". Regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 16:29, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the table again until we reach a consensus on this page to warrant inclusion of the opinion polls.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 12:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

• I have added back the opinion polls section. Since only the two of us are editing this so far, to avoid an edit war, please refer to several recent articles about election here on Wikipedia, where you will be able to see that the structure of this article is rather standard. I would like to point out several examples: United States House of Representatives elections, 2010, [[1]], Israeli legislative election, 2009, Irish general election, 2011,etc. Crnorizec (talk) 14:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
  • That's fine and I concur with you, but as I stated above I don't like the article to look like a bookmaker exchange or its content to rely only on biases. My intention as yours is to improve the article to offer more reliable content for the readers, freed of biases of any kind. But unfortunately as you certainly know, the existing of independent rating agencies in Macedonia is a disputed topic of discussion, and therefore I don't think we should insert the section regardless of everything else.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 14:37, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Blank sections

Reviewing the content I've found few titled blank sections. The idea is fine to keep them blank until more information will be out, but seemingly it makes the article poorer. My intention is not to remove them, but we could mark them using a hint sign (<-Title->) in the editor.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 13:52, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

There were no blank sections before your edits. Please refer to the article's history to verify this. Crnorizec (talk) 03:12, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Outdated opinion polls

Seems like the opinion polls are obsolete with the most recent dates back for about twenty days.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 12:21, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

• I have added one more opinion poll from Dnevnik/Rejting. Also, after the election, it became obvious that some of the pollsters are downright biased, so I propose to ignore them for the next election articles about Macedonia. Here is the list: Progress, Liberta, and Dimitrija Cupovski, and the source [2]. Crnorizec (talk) 17:18, 6 June 2011 (UTC)