On 8/15/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/15/06, Mark Ryan ultrablue@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
Surely the opposite can also be said of a "keep" consensus AfD: most of the voters plainly want the article to continue to exist as an article, not as a redirect and not deleted.
I haven't looked at the articles in question, so perhaps I'm off the mark in this case... But if people aren't willing to put some skin in their participation then there isn't much cause for us to heed their view. If the article is in terrible need of cleanup and none of the people arguing to keep it are willing to do the *work*, then I don't see a problem with someone else coming by and cleaning it up by merging it. (And yes, sometimes the best merge adds nothing to the merge target)...
In any case, redirecting it isn't ignoring the AfD... we consider 'merge and redirect' to be equal to 'keep' in an AfD. Perhaps doing so is incorrect because we really should be discussing the existence of an article at that name, but that is what is done today.
Exactly. And as to the other question, an AfD that is evenly-split between redirect and delete could be closed as no consensus, but the proper course of action would be to "default" the article to a redirect.
An AfD ultimately comes down to two results: delete, and don't delete. Don't delete includes no consensus, redirect, merge, and anything that results in the article history still being available to no-admins. An article with an AfD result of "Don't delete" can go to another "don't delete" through normal editorial actions and doesn't require an AfD to dictate. In other words, even an article with an AfD result of Keep can be merged or simply redirected through normal editorial actions (ie, through consensus, discussion, even common sense).