Mark Gallagher wrote:
It's not accurate to say that merge == keep *or* that merge == delete. Merge == merge. Fortunately, it's usually the people pushing an "inclusionist" or "deletionist" view that take the "merges should be reinterpreted" line, and not the closing admins.
They do have to interpret it one way or the other, though, since except in the rare case of history merges it comes down to a binary decision of either pressing the "delete" link or _not_ pressing the "delete" link. Merge votes push the result one way or the other, don't they?
Perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes through differing interpretations of exactly what is meant by "keeping" an article or "deleting" it? It seems like a very black-and-white situation to me.