Erik Moeller wrote:
Jimmy:
That is not to say that polls/votes can't play any role in the process, nor is it to say that we don't need to advance the state of the art in dealing with such cases. But introducing binding votes destroys some of what is most essential about the interaction between the wiki process and the generation of high quality neutral content.
What we have here is a belief. I would like to see some arguments in support of that belief. "Binding vote" doesn't mean "cannot ever be questioned for all eternity." But there should be good reasons for doing so. And when you define these conditions and processes, the distinction between votes and polls becomes less clear, and what you think is "something you will never support" might actually turn out to be something you already support, albeit in a less formally defined manner.
When votes are frequent enough people soon lose track of which ones are important. The distinction between a binding vote on major policy, and a casual poll of personal preferences tend to get lost. We have _Votes_ for Deletion; we have votes whenever someone wants to become a sysop, etc., etc. A vote was announced on the AD/CE issue, but when I followed the annoucement about that I found out that the vote would not begin for a few days. I have no idea about the level of officialdom that would apply to that, and I can't spend all my wiki time looking for places to exercise my franchise. What charecterizes an important vote besides the fact that the person who starts the process says that it is.
Ec