Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Opinion polling for the Iranian presidential election, 2013


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   merge to Iranian presidential election, 2013. Policy says to delete, despite the non-policy-compliant "keep" !votes. Merge of selective material and the deletion of this title makes the most sense based on the arguments presented (✉→ BWilkins ←✎) 11:25, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Opinion polling for the Iranian presidential election, 2013

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Fails GNG. The article is sourced mainly through blog type websites and has been created by a member of campaign of one of the candidates, possibly to promote his candidate. The article is entirely based on primary sources and as you see in the history of the article, this user regularly update it as online polls go on (Even you don't know Persian you can click on those links so you go directly to the polls articles). There is also some obvious WP:COATRACKing going on from supporters of various political candidates since some of these websites are close to some of the presidential candidates. Farhikht (talk) 09:58, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Iran-related deletion discussions. Farhikht (talk) 10:05, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Sir  Rcsprinter,  Bt  (state)  @ 12:37, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of News-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:49, 30 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Dear all, I removed all of the unreferenced and research-based parts from the article in order to solve the "Nomination of the article for deletion" problem! In addition, I removed the parts that were based on some non-reliable blog-typed websites. Now all of the polls in the article have some reliable references which are mostly the News-agency websites. Please recheck the article and if you found it good, remove the "tag of deletion" from the article. Regards, Koorosh1234 (talk|contribs)             16:44, 31 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Merge back with Iranian presidential election, 2013 now that the page is only two tables, I think it will fit once again. It was only split off last week. Opinion polling in Iran has always been a very tricky process to report on, given the lack of independent media and association between pollsters and parties or politicians, so I remember for the last election, there was a prose section on the problems of polling, and each of the polls had a blurb indicating both who it was from and who reported the results. That's a better patten for us to follow.-- Patrick, o Ѻ ∞ 16:52, 31 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks dear Patrick. As it is discussed in Talk:Iranian presidential election, 2013, there was some disagreement about keeping these poll tables in the main article. So it's because this new article is created for these polls. Also in the following days and as we close to the Election date, some more online polls are coming and will be added to the tables and the tables become larger. Therefore, will it be fine to still keep this new article for the polls like the work is done for French presidential election as here ? Koorosh1234 (talk|contribs)              17:30, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Most of your sources are primary sources, even after clean up: 1, 2, 3:a forum, 4:suspended account, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, etc. and none of them are reliable sources.Farhikht (talk) 21:36, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Keep - The topic is notable and has the potential to be expanded.sicaspi (talk) 21:06, 31 May 2013 (UTC) 
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, czar   &middot;   &middot;  10:27, 6 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete per "WP is not news" and "...directory" This is not an encyclopedia article. It is tables of raw data from primary sources, decorated with pictures of the candidates.  Please mention polling numbers in the main article on the election as secondary sources inform us of their significance.  I would say the same for any election in any nation. Kitfoxxe (talk) 17:06, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete - This is a raw data dump and not an article. -- Whpq (talk) 16:27, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep per precedent in other articles, see this. If there are concerns regarding the quality of the sources used, that should be addressed. But the article itself has merit.--JasonMacker (talk) 00:18, 8 June
 * Right, I don't think its the concept of a separate article on opinion polling for a national election that brings this to AfD, it is the sourcing. Specifically, that there isn't any at the moment, and its very debatable how many there are available from reliable sources.-- Patrick, o Ѻ ∞ 19:57, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

2013 (UTC)
 * Keep - Opinion polls during election campaigns are always of questionable objectivity. These are no different, but the sheer multiplicity of sources and "results" alone indicates that there is a lively debate going on. Whether one might regard some of the sources as "close to some of the presidential candidates" can be a debatable point in itself. This is a wiki article about ongoing developments in a contested - and soon-to-be completed - presidential election, and as such can be considered useful, whether one has concerns about the objectivity of sources or not. However, a notice could usefully be kept above the article warning people not to take any one result too seriously. D Dayus (talk) 14:52, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep Relevant and timely. Keep for the reasons outlined above. Kabirat (talk) 17:08, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep but remove material form unreliable sources. There are some polls who are cited by news agencies and media which can be added.sicaspi (talk) 21:32, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep 100% -- Samək Talk 13:28, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete There's no basis and credibility for much of these pollings. Iranian media is full of ideological institutes and news agencies that always put their perception of discernment ahead of truth. This article is in violation of RS and notiblity. -- Nojan (talk) 17:04, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete The sources are not reliable enough and also this article is not important enough. OmidPLuS (talk) 18:29, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment Some of these polls have been subject of deep coverage by international reliable media such as
 * al-monitor (http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/06/iran-elections-hassan-rouhani-surprise.html),
 * Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/10/a-rare-iran-presidential-poll-shows-tehran-mayor-ghalibaf-as-runaway-favorite/),

and independent Non-governmental Farsi media such as
 * BBC Persian (http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/2013/06/130605_l10_am_polls.shtml),
 * Rooz online (http://www.roozonline.com/persian/news/newsitem/article/-234cba8cdf.html).

Seeing this coverage there is no reason for deleting this page. Does keeping this page mean that its content are verified by wikipedia or they are perfect and flawless? Not at all. We should write whatever we have about them and leave judgement to the reader. So per Verifiability, not truth we should keep this. sicaspi (talk) 20:42, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Both of these Persian sources, one from Roozonline, and the other from BBC Persian , affirms that these polls are not reliable and some of them are associated with candidates as I claimed on the talk page of the article.Farhikht (talk) 22:25, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Discussion of the sourcing specifics should probably be kept to the article's talk page, but Farhikht, the language of a source doesn't make it not a reliable source. As I see it, those are the four sources we can use, but we should, for example, qualify their inclusion with a note about who runs Roozonline. I'm still in favor of merging this. Instead of having this separate article, which so far has been a breading ground for unsourced information, we should have a much shortened table on the Iranian presidential election, 2013 article.-- Patrick, o Ѻ ∞ 23:04, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Patrick, I just wanted to translate the content of those articles for non-Persian speakers as I do usually. There is no problem with non-English sources.Farhikht (talk) 09:14, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I did not ever claim that the pollings are reliable! I say whatever they are and even if their quality is not ideal, thay have been subject of multiple deep reliable sources. If they are not reliable enough, they do not have enough weight to be mentioned in the main article. --sicaspi (talk) 14:33, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Merge I guess by having many disagreements about keeping this article, by now Patrick suggestion seems the best solution. As it is seen in the last Iranian presidential election on 2009 the polls are also included in the main article with a nice way and by having two separate tables. In the following 1-2 days, I try to manage the current polls in the article and find some reliable sources for some of them and remove the non-referenced and the online ones without any third party sources. Then it is possible to move the final tables to the main article. I hope this way will be fine for all. Koorosh1234 (talk|contribs)             13:17, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, I definitely think the 2009 article provides a reasonable template.-- Patrick, o Ѻ ∞ 16:46, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep notable in the context of Iranian elections, remove unsourced material. Farmanesh (talk) 16:18, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Again I think notability in context is not a problem, its a question of whether we want an article that consists of a table with 5-6 rows, or if perhaps that table would be better in the context of a larger article on the election.-- Patrick, o Ѻ ∞ 16:46, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep we should just remove excessive explanation and also broke links.Soroush90gh (talk) 07:52, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Again I think that's missing the crux of the discussion here. Broken links are a problem, but its a question of whether we need a separate article to present these tables. Particularly when we already have a section on this subject on the main article, where IPOS polls are presented in the prose. One further concern I have is that Wikipedia articles on opinion polling die the day of the election. Just look at the chart for the article on polling for the most recent U.S. election, which had thousands of reliable polls. What I'm saying is there isn't much future for this article past June 22.-- Patrick, o Ѻ ∞ 20:07, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Comment I've now had to fully protect this article for edit waring. I've no comment on the AfD but the article needs stability. If it's decided to be kept, I'd suggest the closing admin re-evaluates the protection. Ged UK  11:37, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Merge back to Iranian presidential election, 2013 per Patrick and 2009 precedent - if after cleanup WP:SIZE permits (looks to me like it would, although if substantial new content is added to either it may become a problem). Otherwise, keep. Ansh666 22:57, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep. If unreliable sources are the problem, then remove them.VR talk  05:15, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Merge into Iranian presidential election, 2013 per Patrick,Koorosh1234 and Ansh. While this topic may loom large in some editor's perspectives, it is just part of the election, and deserves brief mention in that article, and just as a summary not as tables. --Bejnar (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.