On 08/07/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
- AfD is not a vote;
- Admins who count votes should not be closing AfDs.
- An objective vote count is rarely an accurate gauge of whether an
article ought to be kept or deleted; admins should be taking into account other factors like AfDs when they gauge the consensus of the debate.
Johnleemk
Again the redefinition of the word "consensus" to avoid meaning general agreement. No-one should ever have to "gauge" the consensus - if it is there, it's there - i.e. general agreement all round. If you don't have that, you don't have consensus. Admins should never have to make "controversial" decisions if decision-making in Wikipedia were actually by consensus.
Now if people want to stop pretending, and call what Wikipedia looks for in decision making something other than consensus - fine. Otherwise decisions should strictly not be taken where there is not consensus. Of course this would bring the project to a standstill. So I suggest people stop using the word "consensus".
I think a lot of people on Wikipedia now have a definition of "consensus" that means "Wikipedia's decision making mechanism" (whatever that actually happens to be in any given debate; sometimes genuine consensus, other times vote counting, super-majority, convincing arguments, everyone but a small minority or one or two individuals in agreement, whatever the action-taker gets away with, and so on)
Zoney