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Talk:2023 Warrandyte state by-election

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Owen214 (talk | contribs) at 05:11, 27 July 2023 (→Biased coverage: Reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Maya Tesa

The following text was removed by user J2m5:

Liberal Democrats member who most recently contested the 2023 Aston by-election as an "Independent Libertarian" (with support from the Liberal Democrats and their members).
Before that, she was as a candidate for the North-Eastern Metropolitan Region in the Victorian State Election 2022 (running for Liberal Democrats party).
Even earlier, she was also a candidate for Jagajaga in the 2022 Federal Election (as part of the Liberal Democrats party).
She has been an advocate against Vaccine Mandates,[1] a supporter of controversial politician Moira Deeming,[2] and a supporter of the "No" Vote in the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum.[3]

If this is incompliant with a Wikipedia policy in some way, I am happy to be educated, but unlike party candidates, it is hard to find background information on independent candidates.

Especially in this particular case where this candidate is attempting to pivot away from a previous brand despite still holding almost the exactly the same views and is still very much associated with the previous, most recently being a "Libertarian Community Advocate" speaker at the "2023 Liberty Gala" event held very recently - 1st July 2023 [4].

I am not making a judgement about her views one way or the other, only that she has them, and the people have a right to know and make their own decisions - Some will like them, and some won't. Of course, if she no longer holds these views, she is free to make further statements about it rather than suppressing it. Fazwazzle (talk) 20:49, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Fazwazzle: Hi there, the candidates table on these pages generally only have one line describing each candidate in compliance with WP:UNDUEWEIGHT. As one example, we have not listed which side each candidate supports in the referendum for other candidates, so writing such a thing for this one candidate would be giving WP:UNDUEWEIGHT. If there has been media coverage (secondary sources only) of Tesa in relation to this by-election then that would be good to pop down as a subheading similar to how "Liberal" and "Independent" are listed. Sorry I didn't see this until now - in order to ping another user, you can use Template:Re. J2m5 (talk) 08:53, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Biased coverage

The infobox for the election was highlighting the presence of 3 parties, despite the fact that there were 6 candidates last time, and one of the highlighted parties (Labor) hasn't even nominated a candidate!

Parties spend tens of thousands of dollars on signage that says little more than "We exist. Here is our candidate. This is their name", and here is Wikipedia, an impartial observer, giving selective coverage to three parties. Considering the election hasn't even happened yet, and the results are not in, there is no justification for choosing any particular 3 parties as deserving more attention.

Unbiasing the coverage of election is consistent with a Wikipedia-wide proposal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Candidates_and_elections#Bias_in_summaries_and_infoboxes Owen214 (talk) 00:59, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Owen214: The parties chosen are based on last election's results. Although I agree that it is not ideal and I would like to see a wider discussion on this with respect to general policy. J2m5 (talk) 00:01, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It appears that parties are being chosen ad-hoc, with policies being imagined and cited as needed. In the history of this page for instance, @Devonian Wombat claims that the biased approach was the "policy for Australian by-elections". Where is the policy written?
I have a pending proposal to formalise matters − if you have a preferred way of doing things, feel free to join the debate there and discuss it formally instead of breaking Wikipedia's rules about edit wars and biased coverage. Owen214 (talk) 05:31, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Owen214, to be quite frank I do not see how your proposed change would do anything other than destroy the usefulness of election infoboxes. Your proposal for equal attention given to all parties is a clear violation of the WP:UNDUEWEIGHT policy, as it gives undue attention to micro-parties that are of no political relevance. Devonian Wombat (talk) 06:02, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'd tend to agree, the infobox needs to be streamlined for ease of use for users. J2m5 (talk) 09:37, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you think the average user is too stupid to understand more than one set of numbers the only correct course of action is to shut down this encyclopedia as a failure. Devonian Wombat (talk) 23:34, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well your points are more relevant for the Wikipedia-wide discussion (feel free to contribute!), not for the Warrandyte by-election. But in terms of giving undue weight to "micro-parties", the election hasn't even happened yet. You're predicting the future to justify biased omissions of facts in the article.
Why can articles about wars manage to list micro-contributors, but for articles about elections, this is impossible? Owen214 (talk) 07:12, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(a party would not be considered a "micro-party", undeserving of even being acknowledged to exist, if they win the seat of Warrandyte) Owen214 (talk) 07:23, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Because war articles are written with a political-historical encyclopaedic tone - whereas election articles are written with an current-affairs encyclopaedic tone. Whereas Qatari support for the transitional government in the Syrian civil war is of interest to the average reader of Wikipedia, the fact that Kevin Young got less than 1% of the vote in the Fadden by-election is not. Infoboxes are for a summary of information, not trivia. If candidates get a large chunk of the vote then they deserve to be in the infobox. J2m5 (talk) 09:17, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Luxembourg can't have provided more than 1% of the troops for the Korean War, yet it makes it into the info box. Your argument doesn't stack up. Wikipedia is meant to be an unbiased encyclopedia, not a flash-briefing news site. Owen214 (talk) 05:11, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I see you are again raising this total non-issue. The "Wikipedia-wide proposal" you speak of is nothing but your own suggestion that went totally ignored (perhaps because most editors can see that it's not an issue and not worth their time to continually explain why). Asides from the numerous explanations I've already given you elsewhere, I have to agree with Devonian Wombat. Asides from defeating the point of an infobox (being a summary of the significant parts of the article), you're also assuming readers are a lot more stupid than they actually are, and you're giving undue weight to small and fringe groups. 5225C (talk • contributions) 05:24, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The election has not happened − each party is just as relevant as each other. Your explanations boil down to the fact that you feel entitled to predict the future and enforce a self-fulfilling bias to the zeitgeist: "this candidate is not going to win, so let's write as though they don't even exist". People looking for information absorb this bias that they don't exist, then they don't vote for the candidate, and you get to say "see, I was right that they wouldn't win."
Why do politicians go to such lengths to court the Murdoch family? Why do parties spend such sums on advertising that just says "Bob is the candidate for the Red Party", if the visibility of candidates is apparently a non-issue?
Yes, preventing infoboxes from having bias would undermine their ability to provide information quickly, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a news site.
I've followed the procedures, by making the Wikipedia-wide proposal. Your framing of it as "nothing but your own suggestion" is again channeling the idea that things must arbitrarily remain the way they are; and that the status quo has some sort of inherent right to be treated as correct and valid. Your arguments have no more depth than the tautological "the way it was is the way it always was"; or your inclinations to throwing names at me and the various "fringe parties" you dislike. Please provide some real logic and respond by the appropriate mechanism − the Wikipedia-wide discussion, not the comment box for your edit war. Owen214 (talk) 05:07, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Removing unrelated results

I struggle to see why the results from a previous election should be included before the actual candidates here. In fact, why are the previous election results included at all? There will still be a link to that previous election. It seems that the desire for some sort of winner and ranking is so strong that we're including just anything, no matter how irrelevant and no matter how much it biases the upcoming election.

Revealing the popularity of each previous candidate will encourage voters to pick candidates who were previously popular. Owen214 (talk) 11:36, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ https://www.facebook.com/LibertarianMaya/posts/pfbid0BmKEA4ZanC2CM5y2Hf7x4u2jN7JFTeSKi6vmG82zhqQ1X5JUkgAqErXchbpBdYBEl
  2. ^ https://www.facebook.com/LibertarianMaya/posts/pfbid07s98NLWL8RN2AGyELiFbtsmCwPoEPEJPU9FAJFZY9efeeSd7Co2B4o2JoqnqKHXbl
  3. ^ https://twitter.com/LibertarianMaya/status/1663387563439308801
  4. ^ https://www.facebook.com/events/1913351595683787
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