On 11/20/05, Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
A merge vote means "merge the content elsewhere and then create a redirect". Someone who votes merge doesn't want the page deleted, they want the content merged elsewhere. It's important to understand this, because if we copy content and then delete the original article, we are violating the GFDL by failing to preserve the edit history. Instead, we merge content and create a redirect.
Consequently, there is no need for the closing administrator to count "merge" as anything but a keep vote. Someone who votes merge wants the article kept, because the article must be kept in order to merge the content and comply with the GFDL.
Ryan
How do you know that they want the article kept? AfD is only binary because of the polarising forces of the "inclusionists" and "deletionists". It needn't be so. A vote to merge is a vote to merge. It may have other results, such as forcing a no-consensus. It is not acceptable for anyone to say otherwise. If someone means something other than what they write, let them say it. Don't say "I know more than you, and merging means letting some information stay, as does keeping, therefore keeping == merging, therefore I can enterpret your vote as a 'keep'".
Would you enterpret "Redirect" as a keep? The information is, after all, kept in the article history.
-- Sam