Talk:Zimbabwean presidential election, 2008

Untitled
The presidential election will probably be held in 2008, and it will be the parliamentary election that will be moved from 2010 (instead of the other way around). See here. This really shouldn't have been created in the first place, because no plan for moving the election dates has been approved yet. Everyking 15:43, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, it seemed quite definite at that time. We can always switch around the dates again, of course. &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 17:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

This article needs to be divided into sections
I think this page needs to be divided into more sections because I don't think the whole election can be fit neatly into a time line. I have added section "Allegations of vote buying" and I think another one on the voters' roll is required. Any thoughts? Eenoowendo (talk) 20:45, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It could definitely be organized better. It resembles a timeline more than I'd like. Everyking (talk) 02:47, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Strange behaviour
While I was editing Wikipedia did a couple strange things which I don't fully understand. Fortunately, a bot fixed it (somewhat). Does anyone know why the references and external links are invisible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eenoowendo (talk • contribs) 16:40, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * One of the reference was not closed properly. FFMG (talk) 16:52, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

More Sources from the Guardian

 * http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/01/zimbabwe - Secret Mugabe meeting ponders military move or fixed result - but not an admission of defeat
 * http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/01/zimbabwe1 - Mugabe party sources concede loss of first round
 * http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/01/zimbabwe2 - Zimbabwe opposition in talks with military —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.29.43.3 (talk) 17:00, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Election result
VOA Africa now reports that Tsvangirai has denied succession talks with the government. WillOakland (talk) 19:04, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Who win?
Who win the election?--Martianmister (talk) 16:25, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The short answer is: nobody. The long answer is the article. Everyking (talk) 23:07, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The shortest answer is it's not relevant per WP:TALK. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Sources for results
Anyone have a source for by-constituency results that were posted at the polling stations ? We have them for parliamentary, I am looking for the equivalent for presidential. Wizzy… &#9742; 11:33, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

How about uploading photos of the results posted at polling stations? Would that be in line with Wikipedia rules? --filip (talk) 11:22, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I still have not seen these. Ideas ? Wizzy&hellip; &#9742; 09:16, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you
Just want to say how fantastic the coverage of the election has been in this article. Every contributor should be commended for their excellent work.

And as a small anecdote, I'm finding this coverage much much better than the half-baked reports from news.bbc.co.uk and all the South African websites (sabcnews.com, iol.co.za, news24.com, etc) -- for example none of these news sources has answered these questions: "Why is the ZEC not releasing the results?" "Has the ZEC got a final result for the presidential vote or not?" "What exactly was argued in the High Court? (the arguments apparently continued for hours and into the next day - for something I would have thought would be quite clear and concise), "How secure are the ballots and the results - would it be easy for someone to now get access to them and tamper with them?". -- and more questions that I now can't recall Rfwoolf (talk) 14:02, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Again today, I read about 5 different news sources about the Zimbabwe Election Crisis, and again, I find this Wikipedia article covers it beter!!!Rfwoolf (talk) 20:56, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Again I want to congratulate everybody for their sterling work on this article. This issue has been linked to on the Main Page under the news section and is a fantastic article. Well done! Rfwoolf (talk) 09:49, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. this article is amazing. extremely extensive and eye widening. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.86.142.250 (talk) 15:58, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Odd tag
The tag at the top seems bad because this election occurred 3 weeks ago. Is there a better tag to possibly replace it with. Spencer T♦C 01:32, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Not so easy to do anything about, the tag is added by Infobox Election, and having ongoing=yes. Since this option governs what sections of the infobox is included it would take a major rewrite of the template to included the option to override the warning tag. Taemyr (talk) 23:20, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Assessment
Glancing at the article, shouldn't this be at the very least B-class. An issue would maybe be stability. Punkmorten (talk) 17:38, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Return
Morgan Tsvangirai left from neighbouring South Africa, landed in Harare airport, and sped off in a 3-car convoy ahead of the scheduled 27 June election.Afp.google.com, Opposition leader returns to Zimbabwe --Florentino floro (talk) 10:56, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Makoni
Should we remove Simba Makoni since he was eliminated in the run-off Rizalninoynapoleon (talk) 11:03, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Splitting the article into new pages for readability
This page is 159 kb long as of 11am EST. How can we split the article? By month? By section? Either way, the article seriously needs splitting.--Thomas.macmillan (talk) 15:00, 28 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think it needs splitting, but we need to remove a lot of unneeded information and develop those into their own larger articles.
 * Currently it is almost a running commentary of what is happening on the ground on a day to day basis, but that's not the way it should be.
 * We need something like:
 * First Round
 * Participants
 * Results
 * Controversies, (violences and so forth)
 * Reaction
 * Second Round
 * Participants
 * Results
 * Controversies
 * Reaction
 * And remove a lot of the less important info, maybe we should look at other, less controversial elections and see what needs to be included and not. We need to only include information that would be important to a reader in 5 years time.


 * Then, if we really need to we can split the article into main articles, like ZEC in the 2008 elections, Violence in the 2008 election and so on. FFMG (talk) 05:07, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree that this should be split. It makes sense to include a relatively high level of detail for an election that is so historically significant--I have not read the article thoroughly but as a matter of general principle I think information should be preserved. As it stands, though, the article is way too long. Time to start some subarticles. Mangostar (talk) 18:51, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with the structure there, though I'm not sure we should use the term "results." The official numbers are likely lies, and we should use a term like "outcome" which doesn't imply that the official tally is accurate, given that there's very good reason to believe that it isn't accurate for the first one, and the second one is so structurally flawed as to prevent it from being called an election in any democratic sense. Huadpe (talk) 03:16, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Violent transfer of power
According to The Times, it appears Mugabe's henchmen have murdered Patson Chipiro's wife. He is head of the Zimbabwean opposition party. Willoller (talk) 06:45, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * He's the head of the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district. 14 June 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.53.57.121 (talk) 16:44, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Grammer & Discussion
Just wondering if someone can re-read the article as a whole. I just re-read the last section and it was written very poorly. I edited that, but I don't have the time to read the whole thing.

Also, just as an aside, isn't the discussion for the edits to the article and not comments in regard to the discussion. ie- "deja you =="?? Lihaas (talk) 21:23, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That is correct, per WP:FORUM. I just removed the irrelevant section. Mangostar (talk) 22:52, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Article length
Could someone more familiar with the election than myself split the article into multiple pages? at 204K (before pictures!), it takes a while to load even on a high-speed connection, and is unwieldly in general... Bushytails (talk) 22:51, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * This article need to be shortened significantly/ split up ASAP. 216.235.8.118 (talk) 13:44, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I generally disagree - I think that this is a complex subject and there's a lot that needs to be covered and the whole thing is still unfolding and more information is still being added. So please exercise some discretion. Rfwoolf (talk) 19:24, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes but that is not a good enough reason to insert everything that could possibly be connected.--AssegaiAli (talk) 15:36, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It needs to be shortened, with links off to other pages such as and, . Other than that is a pretty nice book (except this is an encyclopedia) ^(shrug)^.PB666 yap 22:33, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Deceptive edit summaries
this edit by AssegaiAli has a deceptive edit summary. Significant portions of sourced material are deleted, with edit summary "(Short cleanup and simplify languge)." This sort of thing makes a lot of work for other editors. I am adding the "controversial topic" template to this page. --Marvin Diode (talk) 14:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I apologise if you found my summary unhelpful. Nevertheless, extensive sections of this article are nothing to do with the election. They give overly in-depth coverage in a jounalistic tone of various side-issues that relate to it - but are not ABOUT IT. They do not belong here and as a result this is no longer an encyclopedia article. This article is already much too long and contains a significant proportion of material that obstructs the reader. Check some other articles about elections if you do not appreciate this. I am returning the article to the state I left it in. The article requires further extensive pruning and collating of facts that are currently presented in an ad hoc order, and perhaps we can all co-operate on refining it in this direction. --AssegaiAli (talk) 15:36, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I realize the article is very long; I would have begun splitting things out into subarticles long ago, but the task is formidable due to the need to write summaries for deleted sections (someone deleted the campaign section, which is very important stuff, and moved it all to a subarticle without replacing the content with a summary) and reorganizing references. It is not acceptable to take the short-cut approach and just delete large portions of content without moving them elsewhere. You are not going to get any cooperation with regard to "pruning" unless you are willing to do so in the context of subarticles. Everyking (talk) 16:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Who on earth can find any way around this article? It's just an avalanche of facts. I couldn't find what I was looking for. I'm sure most people are having the same problem.--212.74.26.3 (talk) 13:26, 28 June 2008 (UTC)


 * AssegaiAli's editing substantially improved the sourcing, and the revert threw out that important info. If an editor thinks some material that was deleted by AssegaiAli was important then please re-add that material without deleting AssegaiAli's contributions. ·:· Will Beback  ·:· 19:27, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * For readability's sake, I suggest spliting the text into shorter sections. That may also help focus the article on its topic. ·:· Will Beback  ·:· 19:29, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware that I did so. He didn't improve the sourcing (as far as I saw), he just added back the references that had been removed along with the "campaigning" section so that the citations in other sections based on those references functioned properly (maybe that sounds confusing...). I initially reverted his whole edit, but when I saw what had happened with those refs I added them back in their appropriate places in my next edit, so that the only aspects of his edit that were ultimately reverted were those that deleted information. And again, I'm happy to have information removed&mdash;it just needs to be reorganized into subarticles, not deleted entirely. Everyking (talk) 03:50, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Problematic sentence
IMHO, The following,
 * HRW is part of a network of organizations associated with George Soros, which also includes the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, parent organization of the MDC.

belongs (if at all) at the HRW's wiki page, not here. -- Nahum (talk) 08:00, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

International Response
I think we might want to add a new page on the international response. From today's events at the AU summit, I think this might turn into a bit of a firestorm with some international bodies. Cheers --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 21:11, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, there's plenty to say about the international reaction to warrant a separate article. Should such an article deal with international reaction throughout the entire process, or just international reaction to the second round? Everyking (talk) 23:57, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think since the second round. --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 00:04, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

International reaction to the Zimbabwean presidential election‎ --PatrickFlaherty (talk) 00:40, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Splitting content
While the creation of subarticles is necessary, it would be best if someone would write summaries of the sections that get moved into subarticles, because if that is not done, it leaves gaping holes in our coverage of the subject. For example, we now have no substantial coverage of the second round in this article (nothing beyond what's in the intro); the article just prematurely ends without covering the second round at all, giving the reader only a link to follow. Everyking (talk) 13:11, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, that was me. I wrote a short prargraph to introduce the new article, but it's uncited and probably anti-Mugabe POV so I was unsure how to continue. I wouldn't mind some advice on what kind of material to re-include here, and on what that paragraph I wrote should be like - I hardly ever edit politics articles so this is unfamiliar territory. Totnesmartin (talk) 18:24, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Me neither, I'll mention it at the Zimbabwe wikiproject. Totnesmartin (talk) 08:30, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Template
A template grouping and connecting all of the articles related to the election (this article, the subarticles, the parties, and the candidates) would be useful. I have no skill at creating templates, so I hope someone else will be able to do so. Everyking (talk) 07:39, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Will have a go. Could you make a list of every article you wish to be in the template on this page: User:Mangwanani/Zim Election. Thanks.  Mangwanani  (talk) 17:43, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

ZEC article
Could i suggest that, in the interest of shortening the article, we move some of the information into the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission article?--HandGrenadePins (talk) 12:53, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I saw something in the second paragraph that concerned me
It was: "After the first round, but before the counting was completed, Jose Marcos Barrica, the head of the Southern African Development Community observer mission, described the election as 'a peaceful and credible expression of the will of the people of Zimbabwe.' "

Someone once told me that, in some African language, the word for "politician" and the word for "liar" were the same.

Was José Marcos Barrica a political appointee?

If I remember correctly, there were some irregularities.

Also, didn't the incumbent government order a recount?

I'm concerned that quoting a single person's opinion might be neither neutral, nor something that is best included in an encyclopedia article.

After all, it's just one man's opinion.

Wouldn't it be better just to describe the facts, rather than stick in opinions of people?

The Southern African Development Community is comprised of representatives of governments with close political and economic ties, isn't it?

Mightn't one have an incentive to make a statement that was commensurate with the conflict of interest inherent in the abovementioned relationships? &mdash; Helpful Assistant (talk) 21:25, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

DeAndre Brooks
DeAndre Brooks became the president. He was the best —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.88.77.174 (talk) 16:23, 7 May 2010 (UTC)