Talk:Reactions to the 2019 Bolivian political crisis

Challenge

@Alcibiades979: What exactly are you challenging? Goodposts (talk) 19:40, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

@Goodposts: What was written on the wikipage was not verifiable by the source provided. Alcibiades979 (talk) 19:45, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

@Alcibiades979: You have to prove that claim, and so far you haven't done so. The Foreign Ministry's own website was cited. Goodposts (talk) 19:48, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

@Goodposts: WP:BURDEN: All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[2] the contribution. I don't deny that the foreign ministry made a statement. I deny that what was said in the article was supported by the Foreign Ministry's statement. Alcibiades979 (talk) 19:52, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

@Alcibiades979: The burden was met, as such an inline citation was added. The content was verifiable. When removing well-cited content, the burden of proof is on you to prove that it is irrelevant or otherwise problematic. If you wish to dispute it, you have to explain both what you are disputing and why. You have not done so. "I dispute this" is not good enough on wikipedia. You actually have to provide logic. Goodposts (talk) 19:59, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

No, as WP:BURDEN states, the burden is on the editor who adds or restores material. "Attribute all quotations and any material whose verifiability is challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. The cited source must clearly support the material as presented in the article. Cite the source clearly and precisely (specifying page, section, or such divisions as may be appropriate). See Citing sources for details of how to do this. Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source." Once again, I'm not challenging the source, I'm challenging what was written based on the source, the source did not support what was written thus... WP:CHALLENGE: "All content must be verifiable." The source didn't verify the content. If you can find an RS that directly supports what was written, then that's fine. I tried but couldn't. Alcibiades979 (talk) 20:05, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

@Alcibiades979: Look, I get that you're new to wikipedia. That's fine. However, you fundamentally misunderstand and misuse WP:BURDEN. You are not allowed to just say "I dispute this" and delete cited content, then insist that it never be added back without providing any reason for this other than "I challenge this". That's simply not hot it works. The source verified the content perfectly well. If you think that it doesn't you have to provide a cohesive argument as to why it doesn't - in this case by comparing what the source states versus what was written. If this is not done then the content will simply be added back. Goodposts (talk) 20:10, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

@Goodposts: "Do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced material in an article if it might damage the reputation of living people[6] or existing groups, and do not move it to the talk page. You should also be aware of how the BLP policy applies to groups." Spanish is my first language, english is my second. Maybe you have difficulties with reading spanish. What you wrote was no where near to what the source said. "First paragraph says is formalities, second laments the violence, third says that they are in total agreement with the Brazilian ambassador that they want a peaceful solution that is in accordance with the Bolivian constitution, and laws, and has free transparent elections that honor the Bolivian people. Next paragraph says that Costa Rica is a peaceful democracy that doesn't have an army, that they are calling for a way of the people, that the country doesn't believe in military nor police solutions nor does it support them. That barracks shouldn't have a say in democracies of the hemisphere. That these destinies ought to be decided in the urns. And well finally this because I don't like translating: etc." You took this, but then you inserted stuff in to, then quoted from it here and there but only a couple of words. You changed the meaning of this statement. I read it. They chose their words very carefully. By paraphrasing parts of it, and mashing them with others you created statements that never existed in the original. They were very careful that when they mentioned military and police they never mentioned Bolivia or Bolivians, nor the Armed Forces of BOlivia, but what I took out explicitly linked the two. Then a transition is created without period or anything linking the second paragraph to the fourth to create a statement that they didn't say. This is why primary sources are shied away from, they chose their words exactly. And you can accuse me of being new or whatever, but my english isn't that bad, and I can clearly read the rules. Alcibiades979 (talk) 20:30, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

The statement isn't supported it's borderline BLP because BLP counts for groups too and this is ascribing words to the government of Costa Rica and their ambassador, the burden to prove it is on the editor who added it as per wiki rules. Alcibiades979 (talk) 20:35, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

@Alcibiades979: Which statements did I "create"? Let's translate one paragraph.

"...as a disarmed democracy with a pacifist tradition, Costa Rica also calls for a civic route. Costa Rica does not believe in any military or police solution, nor does it support [such a solution]. Nor does [Costa Rica] believe that the fates of democracies in the [Southern] hemisphere should be decided in the barracks. Their fates should be to be decided at the polls, through free and universal voting."

This was summarized as "it rejected the role of the army in the events" and "It further added that Bolivia's future should be decided trough the holding of free elections, instead of "in the barracks"".

The first half of the paragraph states that Costa Rica doesn't believe in or support in any police or military solution, so this could be legitimately paraphrased as "reject". Which "armed solution" do you think they are referring to? The second half is justified trough the fact that Bolivia is a nation within the Southern Hemisphere.

--

Let's do some more translation: "...We emphatize with the people of Bolivia, we lament the dead and wounded, we condemn the violence..." - this was used to justify "the nation condemned what it viewed as the violence with which the events took place" - yes, it is a paraphrase, but it doesn't change the meaning.

--

And yet more - "In these moments of uncertainty, the establishment of a legitimate exit [to the situation] requires that each step must be taken in a civic, peaceful way, following to the Constitution and the Rule of Law" - this was used to justify "added that it believed a "legitimate exit" would only be found trough a "civil and peaceful way" that is "attatched to the Constitution and rule of law"". This is more or less a direct translation.

So what is to dispute here?

If you want to be that nitpicky about it, then fine - instead of "It rejected the role of the army", "Costa Rica refused to support or believe in an armed solution to the crisis" could instead be used. "Bolivia's future should be decided trough..." could also be replaced with "Southern American nations' futures should be decided trough..."

Your invokation of WP:BLP is also out of place. Please take a moment to understand Wikipedia guidelines before spouting them.

Those are more or less direct translations of the source. Goodposts (talk) 20:50, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

The main issue with the source is that it is the transcript of a speech (WP:PRIMARY) and that it was made by Costa Rica's ambassador at the OAS. We usually include only statements by heads of state, at the very least foreign affairs ministers, and we have been lax enough to include statement from opposition leaders, but using the ambassador's statement, with the possibility of violating WP:OR and without attribution, should not be done. --Jamez42 (talk) 21:20, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Speaking of which, I would like to propose to include statements only by heads of state orn their foreign affairs ministers. The section is named "American governments", not "American governments, former presidents and opposition leaders". It would also make it easier to add a bullet list to the sections. --Jamez42 (talk) 21:28, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Ambassadors are the highest-ranked diplomatic officials per the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and are fully empowered to represent their country. In this case, that isn't the only thing - the ambassador's statement was published on the Foreign Ministry's official website, which recognizes the statement as an official position of the ministry, and not just some offhand remark. Also relevant to the situation is that the OAS meeting in which this took place was discussing Bolivia's crisis at the time. Furthermore, as I've pointed out, Primary sources are not always bad or even undesirable. In this case, it is an official statement made by an authorized representative of a soverign state before a regional organization discussing the matter at hand. There's nothing off about that.

I furthermore respectfully disagree with your proposal for the same reason that I and other editors disagreed in the past, as it would cut out vital information - why should the position of Argentina's President-Elect be ignored? Who gets to make the call as to wether Maduro or Guaido represent Venezuela? Goodposts (talk) 21:38, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I think all the current entries are fine, are we going to have to implement Venezuela rules of bringing edits to discussion before making them? Kingsif (talk) 21:58, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Depends on how controversial they are, tbh. In general discussion isn't a bad thing - it's why I opened this talk section instead of just reverting again. Goodposts (talk) 22:20, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I also disagree with the proposal to only use heads of state or foreign affairs ministers, etc. The similar policy on the Venezuela article has led to a lot of confusion and wasted time (new / less-involved editors unfamiliar with the specific rule for the page repeatedly adding relevant statements that are technically not allowed, etc.). To reduce the barrier of entry to edit, page-specific rules in general should probably be considered very carefully before implementation. The Venezuela policy also led to some crucial omissions based on overly strict interpretations of the rule, such as statements on behalf of the political party controlling the parliament being excluded even when said party had majority control of parliament (e.g., the Nepal Communist Party). — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 23:52, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Jamez42, it creates a simple acid test and avoids bloat. The one I had been harping on was Pablo Iglesias, but there are a lot of occasions, and it opens nebulae in to how to present statements and opinions; ie how is the opinion of Xinhua presented or is it presented at all? Not to be dismissive of Corbyn, but Xinhua's opinion is just as if not more important than his, but it's technically a newspaper. Then by having a clear acid test a line from irrelevant to relevant need not be created. In regard to Cmonghost's concerns: this has probably already been tried on the Venezuela page, but we could clearly state in the lede and then above the International Reaction section that only Head of State and Foreign Minister statements are included, then sticky a post about this to the talk section. Alcibiades979 (talk) 06:22, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

@Alcibiades979: As of a few days ago, Pablo Iglesias was designated as the Vice-Prime Minister of Spain, as following the recent election, the PSOE formed a coalition government with Podemos, the party which Mr. Iglesias' leads. He still hasn't been confirmed, but it appears as though he probably will be. We could wait until that happens and add him then. Or solve the situation, and others like it pre-emptively, by creating a separate section for non-state political respones. Goodposts (talk) 16:16, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Politics

@Goodposts: I saw that. It really surprised me. I know WP:FORUM and all that, but I'm curious to see how it turns out. I lived for four years in Barcelona, and Podemos is radioactive outside of Catalunya because of their support of a Catalan Independence Referendum. I was in Zaragoza at one point on a trip, and I ordered breakfast in Catalan without thinking, and that cafe went silent, was told "aquí hablamos español," also surprising because of español instead of castellano for me. I'm also curious what the PSOE MPs say, a lot of them could be vulnerable in the next elections if they're seen in partnership with Podemos especially in Andalucía and Murcia, one of their traditional strongholds, as that's a favourite place for the Catalan Independence Argument to hit out at in regard to redistribution of taxes, which is why Vox has been making so many gains down there. Alcibiades979 (talk) 11:16, 17 November 2019 (UTC) @Alcibiades979: I'll permit myself a minor breach of WP:FORUM as well, and say that you are probably correct in your explanation in the rise of Vox. Pre-election, the PP and Cs were the primary parties, which attracted the votes of Spanish Unionists and Nationalists, and now it appears that radicalisation has taken it's toll and these voters are no longer content with those parties, as indicated by the Cs' particularly poor electoral result this time around. The rise of Podemos, on the other hand, is part of a phenomenon of Pasokification and represents a disillusionment of leftist voters, perticularly younger ones, with the traditional centre-leftist parties, such as PSOE. Igesias isn't perticularly well-recieved among the PSOE's elite, and you are also correct that his support for the referendum is a major faction in that. If you'd like to discuss this further, I'd be happy to do so on either mine or your talk page! Best regards, Goodposts (talk) 13:10, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

@Goodposts: Podemos received less than 20% of the vote in the last elections, even a lower percentage of seats in Congress and before the election Iglesias seems nowhere near to make an agreement to be Vice-President. I strees the importance of previous guidelines becaue of these situations; it should be noted that they are not "strict" guidelines, but rather a convention agreed on the talk page that can be challenged at any moment in the future. --Jamez42 (talk) 07:08, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

@Jamez42: That is not what the article is stating. It's not him forming the government, it's the PSOE - and they're giving Iglesias the Vice-Primerial post in order to secure his support for Sanchez to be reelected as prime minister. The refusal of Iglesias and his PODEMOS to provide such support previously led to the collapse of the government and the calling of snap elections. In any case - should he be elected to the position, any statements he publishes while in his official capacity would carry not only the weight of his party, but of the Spanish Government. Goodposts (talk) 13:11, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

@Goodposts: I think I didn't understand what you meant with "That is not what the article is stating", but my point is precesily that his positions should not be added just as the Vice-President candidate or the head of his party. He still needs to receive the vote of Congress to hold office. Even if he is, the statements should be evaluated individually because of the inclusion so far of heads of state and foreign affairs ministers as official positions. --Jamez42 (talk) 13:52, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

@Jamez42: - Well, you stated that "Iglesias seems nowhere near to make an agreement to be Vice-President" - and I was referring to the citations I listed, which stated that he was already selected for that position per his coalition agreement with Sanchez, and that the only remaining hurdle would be to secure the support of one of the catalan separatist parties, in order for a government to be formed. I agree that, in the current situation, it would be better to wait to see if and when this happens before adding it, as Spain isn't directly involved with the current Bolivian crisis. However, in other article similar in tone, such as International reactions to the Euromaidan, International reactions to the Charlie Hebdo shooting and International reactions to the Syrian Civil War, it is accepted that reactions from accredited ambassadors, as well as deputy heads of government/foreign ministries are acceptible for inclusion as official stances under a government's flag. Goodposts (talk) 14:32, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

@Goodposts: Now, those articles look like a good precedent. At first sight, it seems like it would be better to continue developing the positions and to accompany with higher ranking officials. This format would make less clear the positions between "support" or "rejection", but that may even be better for the article's neutrality. --Jamez42 (talk) 14:39, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that reactions from higher-ranking officials should definitely be given precedent. However, what I was meaning to say is that the current political situation in Latin America is very complicated. We have countries with disputed parallel institutions (Venezuela), incumbent and elected governments with widely divergent worldviews (Argentina), governments which shifted their position significantly following their election (Ecuador), et cetera. It is difficult to address these situations without context. We could say "incumbent (i.e. presently in power and actually able to excersice said power) heads of state only" - but okay, that means both Fernandez/Kirchner and Guaido get removed. Does that give the reader the full picture? I'm afraid it wouldn't and that's where the whole issue lies. Not to mention, the situation is only getting more complicated as Morales recently declared that he would continue to consider himself as President until the Plurinational Assembly, in which his supporters hold a majority, accepts his resignation, which gives me serious Venezuela institutional conflict deja vu. So I'm trying to find some kind of middle ground as to give the readers more of a snapshot of reactions as a whole, rather than simply those of a few key individuals. Goodposts (talk) 15:16, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Ambassadors

@Goodposts: Since ambassadors are the highest-ranked diplomatic officials, should we refer instead to the position of their ambassador to the UN instead of the OAS, since it is an international body instead of a regional one? Or should we also include the statements of Costa Rica's ambassadors to other nations? In thi article I'm reading that we're talking about around 49 diplomats. Maybe we should also include the ambassadors of the rest of the 192 UN state members to each country, or even those diplomatic representatives from nations that don't have wide international recognition.

When we talked about statements in the article of the responses to the Venezuelan presidential crisis, we found similar problems with organizations, non-state leaders and other politicians. The most simple solution should be to just include the position of the head of state or the foreign affairs minister. In this case it's just better to find a third source that summarizes it.--Jamez42 (talk) 06:46, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

@Jamez42: If you can find another relevant statement made by an accredited Bolivian ambassador regarding the subject and published by the foreign ministry, you are more than welcome to include it! And while Occam's Razor is very useful in a lot of logical scenarios, when writing an encyclopedia the simplest solution is not always the correct one. Goodposts (talk) 13:07, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Alright, it seems we have a proposal and I'm interested. Pinging @Alcibiades979:@Kingsif:, any thoughts? --Jamez42 (talk) 21:39, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

I'll be voting on using the same criteria as at Venezuela - it's getting even more volatile in Bolivia, so a clear line to stop misinformation would be great. Kingsif (talk) 21:58, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

@Goodposts: Managed to find it, in the letter from the ambassador it mentioned that the President of Costa Rica made a statement on the crisis, so I did some quick google searches. If you do some more digging I'm sure you can probably find a more complete one, but for the time being: "El presidente de Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, recomienda elecciones que permitan renovar el liderazgo democrático que debe prevalecer en Bolivia." https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/video/jeanine-anez-bolivia-carlos-alvarado-quesada-costa-rica-williams-kaliman-nationals-washington-juan-soto-juanes-lo-dijo-en-cnn-pkg-gabriela-matute-urdaneta/ Alcibiades979 (talk) 05:34, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

The video has his full statement. He also made another statement here which I've also included.Alcibiades979 (talk) 08:13, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Also in regard to the other question. My only concern is that the whole section starts to get a bit bogged down and difficult to read and interpret if we have many different opinions flying around. I also think that the situation as a whole can be better summarized by a couple of explanatory paragraphs rather than a block of the opinions from various politicians. The American Further-Left has called it a coup, the center left and center right have been calling for a restore to order and prompt elections and the hard right has been both congratulatory of the events, and concerned; I think Bolsonaro doesn't relish the idea of increased tensions leading to a wave of Bolivian immigration. Internationally there's a divide based on typical stuff ie the west on one side and Russia, Iran, Syria on the other. China's been noticeably quiet, and self described democratic socialists politicians have been more supportive toward Morales' view of events. I'm not saying using that verbatim, but I am saying that it may be easier for the reader if an explanatory summary is produced in lieu of well everyones' different thoughts. So have that then the same sort of rundown of every country which has expressed one. Alcibiades979 (talk) 08:34, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Well, I guess the issue is solved then! I have no objection to the sources you've added. While I still do think the Ambassador statement is noteworthy enough to be included, I agree that the President's statement takes precedence.

You are mostly correct in your summary of the events, that is more or less what happened - the left-wing strongly condemned the events, the centre-based ideologies didn't support it and expressed concern over wether or not elections would be held, but stopped short of dubbing it a 'coup', while the right-wing rejoiced in Morales' removal. China in general has a policy of vocal noninterference in the internal affairs of other nations, even though the event represented a loss for China, as Morales and the ALBA grouping's altermondalist worldview was in line with Chinese interests in the region. Syria is actually not a nation I expected to give an opinion about this - I was doing some research on Syrian topics, as I primarily edit Syria-based articles on Wikipedia, and stumpled upon an official reaction of the Syrian government - which I decided to add. As for Bolsonaro - we have to remember that at present, there is a major wave of popular disconent rising across Latin America - besides the Bolivian protests, very large, organized and government-threatening protest movements have emerged in Chile and Ecuador, while in Argentina the government was toppled by the Peronists-K in the recent general elections. Both Bolsonaro and the rest of latin america's leaders know that at any point they could be next - removed by losing an election, a popular uprising or trough military pressure, and that's not a precedent they'd wish to support. That explains the generally muted reactions from governments, which otherwise opposed the efforts to establish an altermondalist left-wing worldview across latin america. At the same time, though, there are plenty of exceptions. Does Guaido fall under the label "right-wing"? He definitely supported Morales' ouster (although he had a clear political reason for doing so - as Morales was a key ally of his main enemy Nicolas Maduro). What about Ecuador? Moreno still claims to have some leftist tendencies, yet at the same time he has been running the country pretty much entirely to the right for at least the past year or two, and as you might have noticed - he didn't lend any support for Morales (although his predecessor Correa did). So, how should this be summarized in order to explain these peculiarities? Goodposts (talk) 13:26, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

References

Lula and Dilma

Lula and Dilma are not part of the government, why are their comments included?--MaoGo (talk) 12:39, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

From what I gather it's becaue it's been agreed to also include opposition leaders, similar to Argentina, but I support removing them and to include a bullet list. --Jamez42 (talk) 16:57, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Argentina is kind of different because you have an administration that is going to change soon.--MaoGo (talk) 17:11, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

True that, just commenting on people that are not holding public offices yet. In any case next month that can be updated. --Jamez42 (talk) 19:18, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Pinging @Cmonghost:, since they have disputed the change. --Jamez42 (talk) 20:03, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

As I've said above, I don't think a proposal to limit the reactions to heads of state, ambassadors, etc., is useful. I think if a reliable source has deemed the opinion worthy of note, we can and should include it here. Accordingly, I restored Lula (but left Dilma out because the statement was sourced from RT). — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 20:30, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Canada

@Jamez42: Did you read the CBC source fully before removing material? Both of the things you removed were supported by the source.

• Áñez is described as de facto in the subhead.
• More importantly, the source clearly states that Canada did not formally recognize Áñez's presidency.

Canada updated its position on the fluid and chaotic situation in Bolivia today, saying it would work with and support the caretaker administration of Jeanine Añez — while still stopping short of formally recognizing her presidency.

It seems like you may have been confused by the listing of Babcock's name, since he did not specifically say "Canada will not formally recognize Áñez". However, the article makes it clear that this is the case, so I have updated the article with a new wording to alleviate this issue. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 20:48, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

@Cmonghost: Yes, I did read the article. I've noticed that you usually comment about the references to use the phrasings verbatim, but not all sources use the same phrasing and we have to be wary of WP:CHERRY. With that I mean that not all sourced cited in the topic refer to Jeanine Añez as "de facto" interim president, and that the statement that Canada did not formally recognize Áñez's presidency is cited by the source. Luckily the most recent edit is an improvement in this sense, though, directly quoting the GAC. --Jamez42 (talk) 21:00, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

@Jamez42: I don't see any explanation here for the removal of the text "Canada stopped short of officially recognizing Áñez". Please explain more clearly. As I said, it is verifiable and relevant. Do you dispute this? If so, why? — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 01:14, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

@Cmonghost: [With that I mean] that the statement that Canada did not formally recognize Áñez's presidency is cited by the source. Having the statement, it's better not to use an editorial voice to say "Canada stopped short", like if it was expected or pressumed it would, and instead just quote the spokesperson and let the reader draw this conclusion. --Jamez42 (talk) 17:58, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

@Jamez42: But given the positions of its allies in the region, such as the US, it was expected and presumed to do so. This makes the lack of formal recognition noteworthy. This is made clear by the cited source:

• In contrast to its swift recognition of the interim presidency of Venezuela's Juan Guaido (Canada was the second country to take the step after the U.S. went first), Canada did not join the U.S. and Brazil in recognizing Añez on Tuesday night, or follow Colombia's example when it did so on Wednesday.
• Canada's embrace of the new government in Bolivia is considerably less warm than that of Brazil and the United States, and in fact closely mirrors the position taken by the European Union, and by Russia.

It is not editorializing to verifiably summarize a source. The recommendation at WP:LONGQUOTE is to Intersperse quotations with original prose that comments on those quotations instead of constructing articles out of quotations with little or no original prose. This article is already somewhat of a WP:QUOTEFARM; let's not make it worse. (To be clear, the statement in question is paraphrased rather than quoted directly, but I think the rationale still applies.) — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 18:20, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

@Cmonghost: And yet Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Peru, all of them countries in the region, seemed to have refrained from explicitly recognizing Añez. Furthermore, Mexico, arguably an important partner of Canada, Uruguay in South America, as well as Cuba and Nicaragua, have all specifically condemned the transfer of power. Putting as an example other governments' reactions in the region, which have differed widely, only shows why this comparison should not be drawn. The outlet may do it for context, but we have the whole of reactions here. --Jamez42 (talk) 17:44, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

@Jamez42: The source mentions that Canada's decision to not formally recognize Áñez is similar to that of Argentina's. I would not be opposed to including something like similarly to the outgoing Macri administration in Argentina, to provide context. We can also say Unlike the U.S. and Brazil, which the source also says, if you prefer. The rest of your comment appears to be an objection to the inclusion of verifiable, relevant information from a reliable source because you don't think it makes sense based on other sources cited in our article, which doesn't seem like a policy-based rationale to me. I think we should summarize the source rather than the opinions of editors. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 18:27, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Map and Venezuela

Should Venezuela have a zig-zag color to reflect that whole situation? Kingsif (talk) 14:19, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Sure, maybe Argentina as well.--MaoGo (talk) 15:27, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Hmm, I think Argentina is a bit more simple - just change color when Kirchner and the new pres officially come into power. Kingsif (talk) 15:28, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

I added orange to have a single and distinguishable color. I think a zig-zag pattern is ugly and I'm not sure if it's a common format, but if it is agreed that it is the best alternative I'll support it. --Jamez42 (talk) 17:14, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

It's not clear to me why we need a map in the first place (I will open a new section about this). However, if we are going to have one, then Venezuela should be marked with both colours to indicate the two contrasting positions. Using a single colour that simply indicates "different positions" is pretty uninformative. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 20:06, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Map

With all due respect to whoever made it, I really don't think a map is a good idea here. It erases a ton of nuance and it requires a lot of interpretation on the part of whoever edits the map. For example, Spain condemned the military's intervention, but it is coloured yellow here simply because it did not use the word "coup". Russia is marked as yellow even though it both referred to the events as a "coup" (green) and recognized Áñez in her role as interim president (blue) — the categories in the map are not even close to being mutually exclusive. Virtually all nations expressed concern about violence, etc. There is simply no good way to represent these issues on a coloured map, which requires nations to be assigned to categories. Unlike the Venezuela case, where formal recognition could be used to assign these categories, creating this map requires editorial synthesis and in some cases original research (interpreting statements as "support" or not, etc.). I recommend that we remove the map from the article. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 20:15, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Since concerns of SYNTH and OR have been brought up, I will remove the map pending discussion. Kingsif (talk) 20:21, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

If I may, a version I thought about of the map is dark and light colors (dark and light blue, dark and light yellow, dark and light green, for example). This was used in the map of the sanctions to distinguish EU members and countries that followed suit. With such a complex situation, I think this could help create an accurate map. --Jamez42 (talk) 22:35, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

More colours and shades would allow for more nuance but would still require a great deal of interpretation and synthesis on the part of whoever creates it, so I don't think that would solve the core issue. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 23:43, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

It depends, if positions are briefed in common factors (recognition, definition, support/rejection) I think it's possible. More importantly, I think it's worth a try. --Jamez42 (talk) 00:25, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Venezuela

Even if you dispute the election in Venezuela, Guaido has no right to just unilaterally declare himself president and be recognized by other countries without any sort of legitimacy. Does U.S. recognition suddenly make him legitimate? Guaido didn't run in any election to even lose the election. Saying the "two disputed leaders" is disingenuous and heavily leaning to outright U.S. propaganda.

A lot of people disagree with you. Your opinion that it is propaganda does not dictate our editing. Kingsif (talk) 03:31, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

A lot of people disagreed that Hitler invaded Poland, just because Nazi propaganda said it doesn't make it ok. Just because the U.S. government, who has killed millions more people than Nazi Germany has, releases propaganda doesn't make it true.

Update request

It would be good to update this page to reflect more recent reactions to the political crisis. Most of these reactions are from the first week after the resignation of Morales two months ago and are fairly non-committal "urges for restraint" on behalf of parties that wanted to see how things would play out. The obvious exceptions are the strong allies of Morales. A lot of countries have changed their position and this is likely to change further now that a date for elections has been set, the OAS and others have analysed the elections and more corruption charges are revealed. Dating the differing responses would seem prudent to me. I will likely make some headway very slowly to update the responses and add more, but I wanted to draw this to general attention. Crmoorhead (talk) 00:53, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

EU's Erroneous Claims About Blanks/Nulls/100% Turnout

You shouldn't cite those claims because they're junk. Completely at odds with the public data, which the EU even praises in their report. They're from a footnote at the bottom of page 37 and are, without a doubt, one of the worst parts of that report. In fact, I sent them a message about this over a month ago, but they never responded because none of these organizations ever respond to you unless you can hurt them. Here's that erroneous footnote:

"Del total de 34.555 colegios electorales en todo el mundo, la MEE-UE encontró 1.285 con un diez por ciento o más de votos nulos. El promedio nacional de votos nulos fue del 3,55%. En general, una buena práctica electoral daría lugar a menos del cinco por ciento de votos nulos. La base de datos de participación de votantes de IDEA Internacional muestra un promedio mundial del cuatro por ciento de votos nulos. Había 2.526 mesas electorales con un cinco por ciento o más de votos en blanco, mientras que el promedio nacional era del 1,45 por ciento. Aunque algunos de los votos nulos y en blanco parecían explicables como la categorización errónea de las papeletas no utilizadas, otros casos eran inexplicables. La MEE-UE encontró 45 mesas electorales con una participación del cien por cien, lo que es muy inusual, si no inverosímil, especialmente en los colegios electorales grandes."

Their overall percentages (3.55% and 1.45%) are right for the presidential election, but the rest is nonsense. Let's start with 1,285 mesas with 10% of more of null votes. Wrong. If you take the final cómputo spreadsheet and individually count up every single race on every single vote tally sheet, including the congressional ones, with >=10% nulls, you get 988 races with 10% or more null votes, so we can already say that their numbers greatly surpass even the absolute wildest method of calculating this figure. Now take only the unique mesas from those and you get 807. Narrow it still more so it's only the presidential race, which is all anyone actually cares about, and you get 670. Narrow it further to exclude the 100% turnout mesas where the poll worker almost certainly erroneously counted unused ballots as nulls, which the EU even mentions in their footnote, and you get 613. At this point, we're at less than half of the 1,285 mesas claimed by the EU. These same errors are true of the other statistics in that footnote. Number of mesas with 5% or more blank votes? It ain't 2,526. It's 1,637 - or 1,570 if you exclude the 100% participation fakes. And then, just to make all this a bit weirder, they somehow managed to _undercount_ the 100% turnout mesas. To be honest, this is kind of a hard question because there are 280 mesas with 100% turnout in the presidential race, but some of these are only due to poll worker error, so you have to ask yourself: How high a percentage of null or blank ballots do you need in order to call bullshit on one of these 100% turnout mesas? Honestly, I don't know. It's a total judgment call. But if, for example, you use the 10%/5% outlier thresholds that the EU tried to use earlier, then you get 159 mesas, which is like triple the number of mesas that they claimed. But hell, a lot of them have very low numbers of registered voters, so maybe they excluded 2/3 of the mesas for that reason. That's all supposition, though. In truth, only God knows how they arrived at their numbers. But you can say anything about that Bolivian election, and so long as you support the standard line about electoral fraud and especially if you've got institutional cred, you'll never get scrutinized. Who's gonna check? Certainly not the media. And I can't leave without noting that the OAS report is even worse. I've spent the past few days trying to reverse engineer their tables and you wouldn't believe some of the what they did. It's appalling.

(Note: I had to give a link to someone's copy of the spreadsheet file on their Github account because the OEP disabled the Cómputo website like a week ago so you can't get any data from it now. That file is absolutely legit, though. I even checked it against my own copy, which I'm sure won't count for much.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Futurebum (talk • contribs) 17:06, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Your argument is not really clear. Wikipedia can only report on statements made by the press or official documents. The article is not misleading in that the EU report really says what it claims. You are claiming something beyond that - that the EU report is just plain wrong, but we have to assume on good faith that their reported results are accurate. It is not up to you to do your own statistical analysis and change content based on that. Even if what you claim is better than a committee of electoral experts assigned to make this assessment, the data is not available to the general public to look at. This goes beyond Wikipedia:NOR and also violates Wikipedia:Verifiability. Furthermore, this page is "reactions to" the crisis. The results of the EU report are indeed their reactions to and analysis of the elections. We have conflicting views on the coup/not coup status all over the page. Only one can be correct, but we cannot delete the other half because these are all reactions to the crisis that merit mention in an artile of that name. If you have another major organisation that came to a different conclusion, you should add it separately with references, but you cannot delete accurate reports on what the EU said based on the fact you disagree. Crmoorhead (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:02, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

I get it. This page is only supposed to repeat claims that different organizations have made, no matter how spurious they are. If the EU insists that 2+2=3, you report it as such without editorializing. But if those statistics are going to appear on the page and they're contradicted by even the most cursory glance at the public data, then there should at least be a note indicating that. The public voting data is a source, no? It's a far better one than any of the organizations cited in the article. Look, I don't know if you understand Spanish or not, but here is a screenshot of the place where those statistics appear:

https://images2.imgbox.com/f7/5c/BZ5KCPOL_o.png

As you can see, directly above the footnote with the statistics is another footnote which says that the voting data can be downloaded from the public website, although that's no longer true. They then cite statistics based on that same data, but their numbers are way off. You said the general public doesn't have access to this data, but in fact it does - or it did, rather - and the EU says so explicitly in the previous footnote. Also, how hard is it to calculate 10%? I'm not even sure you can call that a statistical analysis. I didn't do some complex regression analysis or whatever - it's basic arithmetic. In effect, I am only repeating what the spreadsheet says. You know when people on here produce a voting table and provide a little column with the percentages, yet their citation is only for the raw numbers, rather than a statistical analysis of the same? That's me; that's what I did. If you absolutely must keep those statistics on the page and thus contribute to the endless stream of bad information that's been put out about that election, then at least note that it's out of step with the public electoral data. That way you will be faithfully reproducing their report's claims as well as performing the rare feat of a simple check of those claims against the public data.

Also, you reverted all the edits I made, some of which were unqualified improvements to what had existed previously. That's pretty obnoxious, you know. The description of Sergio Martínez as an 'outside user' obfuscates who he was, for example, and the fuzzy-headed description of the bo20 server absolutely needed to be improved. I'm going to go reinstate those parts, which I guess makes this an edit skirmish, as well as add a fun cite or two from the OAS's own report. That's what we're talking about, after all. Not a news summary of the executive summary of the report, but rather the actual report itself.

Honestly, I'd probably give all this up and let you bury my edits for eternity if you just let the mask slip for a second and admit that I'm right about this. You seem interested in the issue, which I gather from your frequent edits to the article as well as your zealous defense of the absolute worst claims on it. You're not even a little bit curious to see how bad the EU's statistical claims are? Really? Not even a little? Because I'm right, and it's trivial to check. The link's right there. The EU's numbers are bad, and everyone is bad for blindly trusting them to get things right, even though they're only ineptly analyzing public data. For example, their section about voter registrations is an absolute catastrophe, but you won't see any news or alphabet-soup organizations taking them to task over it because, in truth, nobody really cares about this shit. Nobody, that is, except for you and me, and honestly I think it's only me. Your passions seem more centered on the faithful reproduction of press releases or whatever it is that keeps you coming back here for more. Anyway, like I said, tell me I'm right and I'll fuck off forever and then you can return unmolested to your previous task of furnishing the readers of this article with accurate misinformation.

I don't know how to do conversations on these talk pages, and it seems insane to me that it's all done via edits to the entire section in question, which gives one the ability to edit any previous part of the conversation, but whatever. Here goes.

The wording in the paragraph on the OAS matches the wording in the source. You are not understanding the problem. This is for "reactions to the crisis" and we include content on how that is reported. Your comments and references to parts of the report are your interpretation of that. Phrases like "however" are trying to counter the source it is reported in and violates original research, one of the three cornerstones of Wiki content. This isn't about reactions to reactions.

The edit you made before did not state any other additions you made other than the deletion of the EU report claims, so that was why it was reverted. I can read Spanish. The screenshot you link to is word for word what the article translated. We don't have the public data, and even if we did, we cannot make an analysis of it. That's what the report does. All we can do is say "The EU/OAS did a report and this report was summarised by X as follows", especially in a "reactions to" page. I have also been on the receiving end of this. We don't have criticisms or commentary on the reactions by other parties. Crmoorhead (talk) 17:07, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

You cannot keep reinstating this content. You should read the talk page about what the problem is. The reports need to be reported by a second party or else it is original research. For example, where you quote part of the report itself, you ignore the part in bold at the end of the paragraph "En este ejercicio no se verificó que los documentos incorporados al sistema de cómputo fueran genuinos ni se descartaron las actas que el equipo de peritos calígrafos identificó con irregularidades y/o manipulación." We cannot quote the whole document - the violations are given in order of seriousness and in detail at the head of the report. The name Sergio Martínez does not appear anywhere in the report. The description comes from how it was reported in the source. I don't know where the information about him being a contractor hired for the purpose you state comes from or how it is a relevant detail in "reactions to the Bolvian crisis".Crmoorhead (talk) 17:27, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

You're right, of course. About meta-Wikipedia stuff, though. Not about the rest. First off, the data is public, as I've said countless times. I have it, you have it, everyone has it. I even linked it for you. Many want it to be secret because then it can't be checked, but unfortunately for them it isn't. Second, I did omit their qualifier after the admission that the digitized vote counts matched the images, but it's also true that that qualifier - which they only mentioned as a form of damage control because of how explosive their admission was, which explains why they buried it in the back of their report - only says that the tally sheets there may be compromised by low-level fraud or chain of custody issues, which are outside of the scope of the computer system. What's more, they're talking about the data in the Cómputo system, which is separate from the TREP system, so they're admitting outright that about 33,000 of the 34,555 tally sheet images in the Cómputo system have no reason for someone to doubt them, pace the aforementioned external issues. That group of about 1500 acta images remaining is because the images are direct copies of those found in the TREP system. As the OAS explained, the overwhelming majority of these are tally sheets from overseas, which, also as explained by the OAS, only follows the TSE's already established plan to copy them from the TREP to the Cómputo. The only real question, then, is if those TREP images were manipulated within the TREP system before being copied over to the Cómputo. However, if this were true, the OAS would've demonstrated it because the evidence would be in the voluminous logs turned over to them by Ethical Hacking, the cybersecurity firm which extensively monitored all the servers except for BO1/BO20. Whatever BO1/BO20 did, it did so by communicating with BO2, the primary application server, which reported any updates to the relevant history files - among them MySQL, Apache Tomcat, bash, and so on. Any attempt to introduce new acta data via BO1/BO20 should be clearly distinguishable from acta verification traffic, which only looks like a bunch of POST requests on a specific group of directories and wouldn't produce any changes to images in the database. Hell, you could check the number of acta image/data pairs received via BO11, the monitored gateway for acta data transmissions, then compare it against the number in the system to see if any arrived via other routes, or search the database for any entries with a first transmission timestamp that differs from its 'last transmission' one and review them. It should not be difficult to determine manipulation from BO1/BO20, and yet the OAS has never shown any such evidence, despite having extensive system-wide logs and every reason in the world to look for it.

Look, I'm going to put my cards on the table. I already researched this to death, and even wrote a well-sourced account of what actually happened with the computer system, but I can't get any traction because nobody cares about Bolivia and their national media is uniformly hostile to the former government. I don't care much about the MAS, but I do care about the truth. I'm also right about those null/blank statistics. Maybe you even checked. After all, you did read the part of the OAS report I cited, which is more than most do. God, and that 91% statistic? Outrageous! You can't select a sample for 90+% vote share, then note that a sub-sample of it has 91% vote share. That's idiotic. Don't you think someone reading this article should know that? Is that not valuable information? If this isn't the place for it, then what is? The main Bolivia crisis article? Won't someone else insist that, for some obtuse reason, the truth runs afoul of Wikipedia guidelines? How do I ensure that this information actually appears on the site? Please advise.

Oh, and Sergio Martínez is the 'asesor', or 'outside user', or whatever bogeyman term people want to use to describe him. The OAS declined to identify him in their report, but that didn't stop Álvaro Andrade, the CEO of Ethical Hacking, from quite maliciously naming him two months ago. He's been an object of obsession for the Bolivian media ever since. The OAS really spun quite the yarn about him. So good it ruined his life, even. However, I didn't indicate why he was hired. I don't know where you got that from. I only said that he was a contractor hired by the OEP, which is true, and that he participated in the configuration of BO20, which is simply what the OAS said. I didn't add unnecessary detail. He was being discussed; I merely identified him, and rather tersely at that. My description of the OAS's claims about all that is much more clear than whatever executive summary snippet you reproduced. All right, you can cut my 'however' retort, but the rest is spot-on. I'm sure you won't, though, because you think you're doing God's work by precisely replicating the misleading executive summaries the OAS puts out for all the chumps.

Anyway, I'm gonna go see if the truth has a place at 2019 Bolivian political crisis or if it's as unwelcome there as it is here. My guess is that the situation there is even more dire, since it no doubt has the rapt attention of a horde of dishonest partisans, the cleverest of whom who will cite arcane Wikipedia guidelines in order to suppress inconvenient facts already in the public record. Futurebum (talk) 11:58, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't know if you live in Bolivia or have ever even been there, but the trouble is that we can only use reputable sources for content on wikipedia. pngs of documents or diagrams, reddit articles or Github spreadsheets are not reliable sources. Anyone could make them up and indeed there is motivation to do so. Morales certainly has people that can do that. The publicly available information isn't accessible from the website for a couple of weeks you say, but raw data is not a valid source because it requires interpretation. I spent a lot of time trying to argue the case that the Western media are reporting a lot of things incorrectly on Bolivia. I am in contact several times a day with Bolivians, read their media and visit there semi regularly. I was told that what is common knowledge there is not usable because I need to have a source that is seen as valid. I could not quote lines from the constitution because that also required interpretation. I had to play by the rules too. That people don't care about Bolivia is nonsense. There are a lot of stakeholders. Asides from the people of Bolivia, there are several nations that are political allies of Morales that would be interested in publishing a rebuttal publically. If there are criticisms of the reports explicitly made in reliable sources, include them in the article that might be relevant. It's just not appropriate here. As I said, the wording in the article comes from the source. I feel that if the OAS was so evil, then Morales and pretty much every other American leader would not have been members. There are several supranational bodies where this is not the case. Morales did allow them to conduct the inquiry and promised to abide be results. I don't know why what is being reported on Sergio Martínez in the Bolivian media should be doubted. There is plenty fishy going on there. The corruption in Bolivia is widely known and a lot of the scandals on high-ranking MAS members were public knowledge for years. The holes in finances are not made up. The manipulation and control of the employees of state owned companies to "support the party" is not made up. The civil service should not be under the thrall of one political party.

In all likelihood, MAS will win the next election as they have a good binomial that many opponents of Morales and some of his untouchables are happy with. Arce and Choquehuanca are good candidates and the opposition is very split. If Morales had nominated them in the first place, MAS would have stormed the election. The protests would not have been so strong and people would still be alive. Regardless, talk pages are also not a forum for discussion on political events. You just need to bear in mind that Wikipedia is not reddit and there is a reason why the policies are there. They can be frustrating, but learn to work with them. If you think the EU and OAS aren't interested in listening to you, take your analysis to publications that might be interested in the Spanish-speaking media. Crmoorhead (talk) 23:05, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

I was never intending to use them as sources on Wikipedia. I was only making an argument between you and me, in this little corner of the internet here. The images are, as you noted, all screenshots of documents from the technical staff who administered and supervised the computer system. All these documents are available at the bottom of the Reddit post I linked, and if you don't trust them there, then you can find them elsewhere. The full Ethical Hacking report is available on their website, the October 28th NEOTEC report is available here from Brújula Digital, and the November 4th NEOTEC report is an annex to the OAS's final report. I guess I could cite pages or whatever, but what's the point if it's just you and me and you're determined to stick your head in the sand? The Github link is simply because they disabled the public website. (I suspect they may have disabled it in response to a complaint of mine about their Electoral Atlas website, which, perversely enough, might be the only influence I've ever exercised over all of this.) You can see from the metadata on Github that the Excel file was uploaded on October 26th, the day after they completed the official count. Do you think I'm PablitoActas or whatever? (I'm not.) You could check the file against other files found elsewhere. If they're identical, this further increases the chances that it's legitimate. If you want, you can download the final cómputo sheet from Edgar Villegas, who put out an absolutely bone-headed report that was eagerly lapped up by the Bolivian media. Again, I'm far beyond the question of what appears on a Wikipedia page. I'm just talking to you because we are both interested in the topic.

As for the media stuff: Before I started all this, I thought as you seem to - that if what I produced was good, it would take off - but the reality is that I'm a nobody with no platform, so it's exceptionally difficult to get any attention, even from people who might be sympathetic to the MAS. Also, I didn't translate the post until about a week or so ago, which seriously limited its potential impact. Have you ever tried sending an email to a journalist? These people are assailed non-stop by publicists and spammers and cranks, so it's no wonder it's hard to get through with them. Some of the left-ish academics I emailed responded to say that my analysis seems solid and thorough, but that the TREP suspension doesn't matter anymore and they just want to accept the OAS report and move on. Nobody wants this story. The opposition hates it for obvious reasons and the MAS supporters will, for the most part, robotically chant about how the TREP is non-binding if you try to talk to them about it. I almost got a relatively major outlet to write a story about it, but then events intervened and their resources had to be deployed elsewhere. With each passing second, all of this becomes less newsworthy. If you have any ideas about outlets that might be interested in this story, then please let me know because at this point, I don't know where to turn. I assume you're thinking about Telesur or RT or one of those far-left outlets, but I've tried. Radio silence. I doubt they even read what I wrote. You need credentials to get any responses from anyone. And like I said in my first post in this section, you need to be able to hurt an institution to get a response from them on a sensitive topic. Do you really think I could have an honest conversation with the OAS about their report simply by dialing them up? US congresspeople can't even get a response from them about that report. My hope is that when the trials for the former MAS officials roll around, interest in the real story will pick up and then maybe I can get some traction with my analysis, which is really just me reproducing parts of the first-hand accounts. God, I even got a co-sign from Marcel Guzmán de Rojas, who basically had sole control over the computer system, even if it was only of my criticism of the OAS report and only a small, partial criticism at that. My account also aligns with that of Antonio Costas, who had a front-row seat for the catastrophe and was no MAS supporter. I figure the truth about all this will come out one day, but it won't be Wikipedia breaking the story, which I understand and accept.

Oh, and should I respond to the rest? It mostly seems like external contextual details that don't align with the first-hand accounts of those involved in the TREP suspension, many of whom aren't MAS members and have no obvious reason to lie about what occurred. Álvaro Andrade, who cheered the overthrow of the government, readily admits that the TREP suspension was caused by his security alert. He says as much in his full report and in his interview with Ximena Galarza. It's just that he thinks his intervention prevented electoral fraud because, to his mind, the traffic on BO1 at that time was abnormal and therefore fraudulent, but most likely that's because he's misreading his own graph and he doesn't fully understand the data flows in the system he was monitoring. Why would anyone even flood the primary application server with acta verification traffic? Marcel Guzmán de Rojas, who was about as enmeshed as someone can be in the power structures that preceded the MAS, effectively says the same as Andrade in his reports and TV interviews, except he disputes that the BO1 traffic was abnormal. There's just the one detail about the 'change in trend', which is all the Bolivian media ever cites in their news stories. That's one of the real unknowns about what happened. It's possible that Lucy Cruz made it up to justify the stoppage, but there are other weird events happening around the same time that may explain it. In that Jaque Mate interview, Andrade said the MAS had an advantage of around 11-12 points and that this suddenly dropped to, like, 7-8 points with the verification of a large number of actas from Santa Cruz. There's zero evidence of a MAS advantage that large in the formerly public TREP spreadsheets, which may be explained by the fact that around 7:20PM Guzmán de Rojas reconfigured the public TREP results server to use the data from BO2 instead of BO3, which only had half as many actas verified. It might be that the spreadsheets on BO3 show such a margin at that time, but they ceased to be available to the public after the switch at 7:20PM. All or some of this may explain what Lucy Cruz claimed to have seen. Also, a few days later, there were reports about the incomplete or inaccurate presentation of data on the public results websites, although I think most of that occurred within the context of a real DoS attack. There's probably some stupid explanation for all this, and hopefully one day it'll all come out. It's probably not the one you and the Bolivian opposition have in mind, though.

You're right about Morales, though. Much of this could've been avoided if he had simply stepped aside. Not sure what it has to do with the computer system, but it's true. There are plenty of other things that are true as well, though. Like if the contractors hadn't fucked everything up, some of what followed could've been avoided. Or if the TSE had given their contractors more time to mesh, they wouldn't have fucked everything up. Or if the TSE hadn't fired or run off a bunch of key technical staff, they wouldn't have had to rely so much on their contractors. Or if the MAS had appointed better people to the TSE - people with technical expertise in administering elections - then the TREP suspension wouldn't have happened. The reality is that the MAS's margin had been eroding for years and accusations of electoral fraud are a permanent feature of the political landscape in Bolivia. Eventually, it reached a point where the supposed fraud could be said to have affected the outcome, at which point KA-BOOM. In truth, Morales only repeated his performance in the losing referendum vote, but since the rules were different this time, he won instead of losing, which was unacceptable to his opposition, who successfully organized a coup.

I'm curious to know what you think the media has covered poorly, though. I mean, I can think of so many things, but I imagine we're coming at this from different perspectives. If you want to talk somewhere else, let me know. Futurebum (talk) 20:42, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Updating since no sign of corruption

Maybe all these editors who were saying "You can't trust pro-Venezuelan sources, only U.S. sources are respectable" will go and change their minds with an article like https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/world/americas/bolivia-election-fraud.html, which shows that the OAS was wrong and the very maligned sources were more correct. I find that unlikely though, since they're ideological partisans and heavily biased, which is a general problem in Wikipedia when it comes to political topics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:720:8340:14E4:A6E:5EE:89C1 (talk) 22:36, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

The MIT investigation is not tantamount to making the article say "false claims" etc. Go read WP:RS, maybe you'll accept it, I find that unlikely though. Kingsif (talk) 13:30, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm talking about pieces of shit like you, if it wasn't clear.

Media and Scholar reaction

There is currently zero section on media and scholar reactions. Despite that chapter should definitely be included. Governments' reactions are limited and not the best sources when it comes to describing the crisis. There needs to be a chapter for mainstream media editorials and researcher's reactions as they are the ones who guides the public understanding of the crisis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Casualfoodie (talk • contribs) 01:43, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

"Media" reactions - by which I'm assuming you mean "how it was reported" generally do not belong on such articles as they would be largely primary sourced and SYNTH. If there are secondary sources which discuss how the media responded, that is appropriate to include. There may be a similar case with scholars - it is generally not appropriate to take, e.g., tweets from several scholars (hopefully only those in relevant fields is what you're proposing) and list them sending thoughts and prayers. It will be more relevant when there is extensive scholarly analysis - however, at this point we will only include these analyses as secondary sources discussing the crisis itself, not as primary sources of X scholar's view. That is, if scholar Smith says "the crisis has caused Y to happen", then in a fallout section we will note that Y has happened, we won't add a reaction saying "Smith thought that the crisis was the cause of Y". Now, again, if sources appear discussing the different scholarly responses, well, that might still not be for a reaction section; it may be that we add notes alongside where the scholarly analysis has been used to cite things with the critical response to their analysis.

This is a long way of saying that media and scholars don't "react" to an event like this, they report on it, and we use their words as our secondary sources for events. Should you find sources that discuss how media and scholars reported, it is more likely to be relevant as a footnote to the events as discussed. Kingsif (talk) 02:09, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

The last Chapter implied that Bolivia's lithium industry is worthless not just now but in the next decades and forever...that is false

I have one edit reverted (which I don't agree with the reversion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1023560130

The current article at its very bottom, ONLY implies to readers that bolivia's lithium industry is worthless. That is actually not even that black and white but more complex and my sources back me up in that the current wiki article is completely misleading in regards to that misleading claim. https://www.dw.com/en/german-industry-hopes-to-lift-bolivias-lithium-treasure/a-55572714

It's absurd for WIKIPEDIA to claim to readers that Bolivia lithium economy is just forever worthless and has no economic potetial or political importance. That's not even true as logically if it was actually worthless, large german companies, as well as many others, wouldn't go lobby for over a decade or bother to pour money into the industry as they expect profits.

Bolivia also had partnered up with China as a strategic partner and clearly, the Chinese also saw potential in the industry just like the germans. In fact, many international big-time investors have tried to access bolivia's lithium and they would not bother if the lithium industry was forever worthless.

The reason why Bolivian lithium is "currently" not the MOST profitable and not solid is that current tech makes the profit margins slimmer and also the international demand for lithium is still low https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/dec/29/bolivia-green-energy-superpower-lithium

Morales maintained lithium under state control and restricted investments due to the demand of lithium being low.

But in the future, that could rapidly change. Depending upon government policy, Bolivian lithium production could grow five-fold by 2025, powered by rising metal prices and rising global interest in clean energy. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/uploads/documents/Bolivia%27s%20Lithium%20Future_A%20Second%20Chance.pdf

Bolivia even had an agreement set to initially supply enough lithium (40K tonnes) to Europe to power half a million electric cars a year by 2022 and the agreement lasting 70 years. That doesn't seem worthless to me but very lucrative and huge for Europe's energy security.

ACI Systems is also in talks to supply companies based in Germany and elsewhere in Europe with lithium from Bolivia. The joint venture aims to produce up to 40,000 tons of lithium hydroxide per year from 2022 over a period of 70 years. Wolfgang Schmutz, CEO of ACI Group, the parent company of ACI Systems, said more than 80 percent of the lithium would be exported to Germany.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-bolivia-lithium-idUSKBN1OB206

If Morale's party wins. He would maintain state control. But if the right-wing party had won, They would have invited private corporations to COMPLETELY take over and end the state ownership.

Several experts noted that the national lithium project is going to be difficult to dismantle in its entirety, given the considerable resources invested in it and the fact that, under Morales, nationalization of mineral resources was enshrined in Bolivia's constitution. Yet a conservative government might try to do just that. "If we see a right-wing election in April, it's quite feasible there won't be a state or national company, they'll just let private companies run the whole thing," said Bret Gustafon, a Washington University in St. Louis anthropologist who has studied extractive industries in Bolivia. "That would probably face massive opposition from locals and others alike."

Morales has always fought against that. He wanted to maintain some state control and ownership and that's what he meant by "coup for lithium"..But the current wikipedia article wrongfully implies like that there is zero profits or future in bolivia's lithium industry as if for the rest of the time.

Hence why all I wanted to do was mention the larger FAIR context that (tho) Bolivia's lithium industry is not (CURRENTLY) the most profitable with the "current" technology, Bolivia still has the largest lithium reserves, and that Morales has always wanted state control of lithium. And that big players like German investors and Chinese gov clearly have been pouring money in that industry and not for no reason at all. That CONTEXT is true and let the readers make up their own mind on whether the Bolivian lithium industry truly has no economic and political value instead of wiki editors just claiming that as a hard fact. Especially when many other sources has contradicted the current wikipedia's article statement that bolivia's lithium is just worthless and unappealing when they highlighted how German government officials have clearly been battling the Chinese for bolivia's lithium mining rights for quite some time. Neither country sees bolivia's lithium as worthless and so why it is wrong for Wikipedia to give that flawed impression. Casualfoodie

(talk) 02:55, 17 May 2021 (UTC)