On 7/5/06, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote: [snip]
The concept of "suffrage" is not relevant to AfD, because *xfD is not a vote*. Newbies flooding an AfD discussion and needing to be ignored is a Big Problem ... if you're one of those few silly billy closers who count votes and make poor decisions and let the side down badly.
We let people edit articles with no community standing at all. Why wouldn't we let them add evidence to an AfD discussion? Newbies, it's true, don't usually contribute anything worthwhile to an AfD --- and if they don't, I'll ignore them on that particular discussion on that basis alone. If a new user *does* have something of value to say, then I'll take their views into account, whether they have 50 article edits or 5000.
[snip]
A major part of the argument made both here and on the Wiki was that the consensus of the community was ignored which is why the question of whether the new users and folks with no article edits are part of the community is material because they are, primarily, the folks whos position did not prevail.
I didn't suggest that new users and complete outsiders can't offer useful input, quite the contrary... I believe that we need to do more to embrace outside expertise. But there is a huge difference between considering outside input and giving stranger to our project equal space on the puck of the [[ouiji board]] of democracy.
Put it to you another way, when you find some strange berries on the ground outside of your house, do you smell them, touch them, look them up in an encyclopedia before eating them... or do you simply grind them up, pull out a needle, and inject them into your veins?
Allowing unknown users equal access to inject their potentially uninformed decisions into the control mix of the project is effectively equivalent.
While we accept submissions promiscuously, that doesn't mean that we must or should accept decision making in the same manner. If we did Wikipedia may well have been voted into a giant hangman or wiki chess game long ago. There is a fundamental difference between accepting a gift from a stranger and more intimate interactions.
Almost any form of edit count or tenure weighing would leave this a clear consensus for delete. Even more importantly, the arguments on the delete side are far more compelling in my view:
"Even more importantly"? I'd say the argument of the alleged strength of the "delete" case (I haven't read the subpage myself) far outweighs any "they don't have suffrage!"-type comments.
I agree which is why I said it was more important. However, reasonable people may disagree on the strength of the arguments, but that doesn't translate into ignoring the community.
Since it's been claimed that the 'community' was ignored, I can only conclude that the position was formed based on a by the numbers view. My personal perspective is that by the numbers is never good no matter what weighing games you play, but it's not material... the claim that the community was ignored is not valid no matter how you measure the AFD results. Even 'by the numbers' should recognize that meatpuppets, and bleeding edge new users don't represent the "community". :)
Cheers.