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Kahlores has tried to re-order parties in the table based on the left-to-right axis, as he has done on multiple articles (being reverted on various of them by other users as well). That this is a very bad idea is easily proven by this and this. These articles are for opinion polling, not for getting entangled in discussions about the parties' ideologies and on which one should be the actual column placement, which is something that the use of the left/right axis will foster as evidenced, to no particular gain in the polls' presentation. Ordering parties based on their last election result is the most objective and widely used criterion available, and unless sources themselves did widely use such a left/right axis (which is not the case here), it should be avoided completely. Another element which has been tried to be implemented is the sorting of the table, which is a major change that would also require a consensus seeing how it is contested as well. Impru20 talk 15:56, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
Every Portuguese citizen knows that PS is center-left and PSD is center-rightThis, again, is not the purpose of this article.
very few non-Portuguese would be able to guess that PSD is a center-right partyYou won't solve this just by ordering parties based on their left/right spectrum. This ordering will only tell a casual reader (at most!) that party A is more to the left/right than party B, but not how much to the left/right is the party placed (and this not counting those situations of parties which can't be properly described within the left/right axis). For instance, placing the PSD to the right of the PS won't necessarily tell readers that the PSD is a center-right party; it could be mistaken as a right-wing or a purely centrist party, depending on how many parties does it have to its left/right (which help nothing but further confusion). All in all, this is much more to explain than this article can handle, and indeed it is not relevant at all because this is not the point of the article. If someone wishes to learn more about a specific party's ideologies, this will be much more properly covered in the party's article.
The left-right arrangement allows us to make sense of the mergers and splits, which are almost always between neighbors on the axisThis can be already easily solved through notes and footnotes, where (btw) you will be able to give a much more precise explanation of such a situation than through a mere ordering of parties in the table. Also, you are making a rather wrong presumption that party alliances are understood only from the perspective of the left-right arrangement, when other factors may intervene than make such an arrangement pointless (i.e. government parties vs opposition parties ( National Government (United Kingdom)), separatist parties vs unionist parties ( Junts pel Sí), etc). Obviously this does not mention the fact that merging columns (as it was done for Portugal Ahead) makes editing the table much more complicated (specially when using the visual editor), and it may also prevent the sortability function from working properly (as for this one, some articles do include it, others don't. I don't see any specific benefit from it, specially considering that most of the table's columns must be left excluded from sortability and that the function poses some technical issues at times, but I will not make this a big issue of contention).
For the biggest obstacle is the widespread misunderstanding of the left-right axis.The biggest obstacle is to think that everything can (or should) be explained from the point of view of the left-right axis. It's not something that you need to explain your point to other Wikipedians so that they "see the truth" or something. The issue here is not a failure to understand the left-right axis, but precisely to understand that ideologies can go beyond such an axis and that we shouldn't be bringing the ideology issue to every article where parties are mentioned. Impru20 talk 17:45, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
casual readers need to know quickly that PSD is not left-wing and is in fact, the major opposition to PSHere you have your concept wrong again. Is "main/major opposition" status dependant on whether the party is the ideological opposite of the ruling party? Because the last time I checked, this is usually determined by support obtained in the previous election. And that's what the current scheme, i.e. ordering by support in latest election, does fulfill. Ideologies have nothing to do here, for example in Poland you have that the main opposition to the ruling right-wing Law and Justice is the centre-right Civic Platform; in Germany the main opposition to the centre-right CDU's-led grand coalition is the far-right Alternative for Germany (and indeed, in Germany the national government is formed by two (supposedly) ideologically-opposite parties). Ideologies have nothing to do here.
the left-right axis shows future coalitions at first glanceTwo very serious issues here: 1) We should not be crystal-balling what "future coalitions" would be; 2) Trying to crystal-ball what "future coalitions" will be merely based on the left-right distribution of parties can indeed backfire spectacularly. Impru20 talk 21:37, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
it shows the real ratio of power between parties, being understood that many minor parties' results never matter on their own, but only as part of one group. Ok, so should we obviate that this poses yet another exercise of crystal-balling (which we aren't supposed to do in Wikipedia, so this of yours can't be an argument for the proposed change), then what happens if one of these minor parties refuses to support the largest party within their bloc? That would obviously make that minor party's result to matter on its own, since it would not be joining any group ( Portuguese's neighbours know it well). Again, everything of what you're explaining here is all matter pertaining to the main election article, which is where you'd explain the parties' positions ahead of the election, their ideological affinities and any alliances or coalitions that they choose to form. This article is for opinion polls.
Spain when there is no regionalist issueHas there any time when regionalism wasn't an issue in the 17 autonomous community-Spain? xD Precisely, the examples you bring demonstrate that your logic shouldn't be applied. In Sweden the blocs have been broken after the Liberal and Centre parties choose to break the centre-right Alliance, whereas in Spain you can't establish a logic based just on the left-right axis, as other factors are usually present as well. Your logic is based on the assumption that the left-right axis is the ever-present dominant logic, that it will always be and that it should be of relevancy when reporting opinion polls, yet none of these are true, actually.
it allows the reader to see the swings between Left and Right halves, and the swings between moderates and extremes; trying to do that with the decreasing order is very tiringThis assumes that swings are always between ideologically-close parties and/or between parties within the same ideological "group", which has been demonstrated in many occasions throughout many countries to not be the case (or at least not explanatory of all inter-party swings). This is also an attempt to try to manually depict ourselves what are the "moderate" and the "extreme" parties, which again is not within the scope of an opinion polling article to deal with (unless pollsters did make such a left-right arrangement in their polls, but this happens to not be the case). Further, we shouldn't be giving readers indications as to how they should interpret sources, as that would constitute WP:SYNTH unless such an interpretation was backed by the sources themselves. Impru20 talk 21:37, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
your analysis is based on the assumption that if one party declines, its support goes to another one which is close to it. I said the contrary: "many swings can be chaotic, and some parties do take voters from everywhere".
To be able to say that a party did not lose to neighbors on the axis, or took from them, the reader has to check first... those neighbors on the axis.This is your own POV, not something constituting an undisputed truth or an unavoidable requirement. This is your opinion, but maybe some other readers don't care at all about "neighbors on the axis". We, as a Wikipedia, shouldn't be giving "hints" to readers as to the direction of party swings. Wikipedia is not a mean to publish opinion pieces, a crystal ball or a newspaper. Poll results must be presented just as sources report them, without additional hints, assumptions or data interpretations of our own creation. Casual readers should be able to reach conclusions themselves with the presented data without them being purposedly directed in any specific way, yet the later is exactly what you are aiming for. If sources do not arrange opinion poll data for parties within the left-right axis, we shouldn't do it ourselves. It's fairly easy to understand. Impru20 talk 19:57, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
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![]() | This article is rated List-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||
|
Kahlores has tried to re-order parties in the table based on the left-to-right axis, as he has done on multiple articles (being reverted on various of them by other users as well). That this is a very bad idea is easily proven by this and this. These articles are for opinion polling, not for getting entangled in discussions about the parties' ideologies and on which one should be the actual column placement, which is something that the use of the left/right axis will foster as evidenced, to no particular gain in the polls' presentation. Ordering parties based on their last election result is the most objective and widely used criterion available, and unless sources themselves did widely use such a left/right axis (which is not the case here), it should be avoided completely. Another element which has been tried to be implemented is the sorting of the table, which is a major change that would also require a consensus seeing how it is contested as well. Impru20 talk 15:56, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
Every Portuguese citizen knows that PS is center-left and PSD is center-rightThis, again, is not the purpose of this article.
very few non-Portuguese would be able to guess that PSD is a center-right partyYou won't solve this just by ordering parties based on their left/right spectrum. This ordering will only tell a casual reader (at most!) that party A is more to the left/right than party B, but not how much to the left/right is the party placed (and this not counting those situations of parties which can't be properly described within the left/right axis). For instance, placing the PSD to the right of the PS won't necessarily tell readers that the PSD is a center-right party; it could be mistaken as a right-wing or a purely centrist party, depending on how many parties does it have to its left/right (which help nothing but further confusion). All in all, this is much more to explain than this article can handle, and indeed it is not relevant at all because this is not the point of the article. If someone wishes to learn more about a specific party's ideologies, this will be much more properly covered in the party's article.
The left-right arrangement allows us to make sense of the mergers and splits, which are almost always between neighbors on the axisThis can be already easily solved through notes and footnotes, where (btw) you will be able to give a much more precise explanation of such a situation than through a mere ordering of parties in the table. Also, you are making a rather wrong presumption that party alliances are understood only from the perspective of the left-right arrangement, when other factors may intervene than make such an arrangement pointless (i.e. government parties vs opposition parties ( National Government (United Kingdom)), separatist parties vs unionist parties ( Junts pel Sí), etc). Obviously this does not mention the fact that merging columns (as it was done for Portugal Ahead) makes editing the table much more complicated (specially when using the visual editor), and it may also prevent the sortability function from working properly (as for this one, some articles do include it, others don't. I don't see any specific benefit from it, specially considering that most of the table's columns must be left excluded from sortability and that the function poses some technical issues at times, but I will not make this a big issue of contention).
For the biggest obstacle is the widespread misunderstanding of the left-right axis.The biggest obstacle is to think that everything can (or should) be explained from the point of view of the left-right axis. It's not something that you need to explain your point to other Wikipedians so that they "see the truth" or something. The issue here is not a failure to understand the left-right axis, but precisely to understand that ideologies can go beyond such an axis and that we shouldn't be bringing the ideology issue to every article where parties are mentioned. Impru20 talk 17:45, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
casual readers need to know quickly that PSD is not left-wing and is in fact, the major opposition to PSHere you have your concept wrong again. Is "main/major opposition" status dependant on whether the party is the ideological opposite of the ruling party? Because the last time I checked, this is usually determined by support obtained in the previous election. And that's what the current scheme, i.e. ordering by support in latest election, does fulfill. Ideologies have nothing to do here, for example in Poland you have that the main opposition to the ruling right-wing Law and Justice is the centre-right Civic Platform; in Germany the main opposition to the centre-right CDU's-led grand coalition is the far-right Alternative for Germany (and indeed, in Germany the national government is formed by two (supposedly) ideologically-opposite parties). Ideologies have nothing to do here.
the left-right axis shows future coalitions at first glanceTwo very serious issues here: 1) We should not be crystal-balling what "future coalitions" would be; 2) Trying to crystal-ball what "future coalitions" will be merely based on the left-right distribution of parties can indeed backfire spectacularly. Impru20 talk 21:37, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
it shows the real ratio of power between parties, being understood that many minor parties' results never matter on their own, but only as part of one group. Ok, so should we obviate that this poses yet another exercise of crystal-balling (which we aren't supposed to do in Wikipedia, so this of yours can't be an argument for the proposed change), then what happens if one of these minor parties refuses to support the largest party within their bloc? That would obviously make that minor party's result to matter on its own, since it would not be joining any group ( Portuguese's neighbours know it well). Again, everything of what you're explaining here is all matter pertaining to the main election article, which is where you'd explain the parties' positions ahead of the election, their ideological affinities and any alliances or coalitions that they choose to form. This article is for opinion polls.
Spain when there is no regionalist issueHas there any time when regionalism wasn't an issue in the 17 autonomous community-Spain? xD Precisely, the examples you bring demonstrate that your logic shouldn't be applied. In Sweden the blocs have been broken after the Liberal and Centre parties choose to break the centre-right Alliance, whereas in Spain you can't establish a logic based just on the left-right axis, as other factors are usually present as well. Your logic is based on the assumption that the left-right axis is the ever-present dominant logic, that it will always be and that it should be of relevancy when reporting opinion polls, yet none of these are true, actually.
it allows the reader to see the swings between Left and Right halves, and the swings between moderates and extremes; trying to do that with the decreasing order is very tiringThis assumes that swings are always between ideologically-close parties and/or between parties within the same ideological "group", which has been demonstrated in many occasions throughout many countries to not be the case (or at least not explanatory of all inter-party swings). This is also an attempt to try to manually depict ourselves what are the "moderate" and the "extreme" parties, which again is not within the scope of an opinion polling article to deal with (unless pollsters did make such a left-right arrangement in their polls, but this happens to not be the case). Further, we shouldn't be giving readers indications as to how they should interpret sources, as that would constitute WP:SYNTH unless such an interpretation was backed by the sources themselves. Impru20 talk 21:37, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
your analysis is based on the assumption that if one party declines, its support goes to another one which is close to it. I said the contrary: "many swings can be chaotic, and some parties do take voters from everywhere".
To be able to say that a party did not lose to neighbors on the axis, or took from them, the reader has to check first... those neighbors on the axis.This is your own POV, not something constituting an undisputed truth or an unavoidable requirement. This is your opinion, but maybe some other readers don't care at all about "neighbors on the axis". We, as a Wikipedia, shouldn't be giving "hints" to readers as to the direction of party swings. Wikipedia is not a mean to publish opinion pieces, a crystal ball or a newspaper. Poll results must be presented just as sources report them, without additional hints, assumptions or data interpretations of our own creation. Casual readers should be able to reach conclusions themselves with the presented data without them being purposedly directed in any specific way, yet the later is exactly what you are aiming for. If sources do not arrange opinion poll data for parties within the left-right axis, we shouldn't do it ourselves. It's fairly easy to understand. Impru20 talk 19:57, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 20:26, 4 January 2021 (UTC)