From: Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com
But I see a lot more discussion about how bad AFD is and a lot less discussion about what we should replace it with, and why whatever system we choose to replace it will be any better. Defense of AFD seems to be getting quieter and quieter but I still don't see us making much progress toward enacting some actual improvements.
Defense of AfD is getting quieter for a number of reasons:
*defense of AfD, even if only to point out that it almost always makes reasonable decisions, and even when making unreasonable decisions, is no more error prone than any other human system, only seems to encourage further outbursts of dubious and unproven claims about its "brokenness", and, in some cases, near-hysterical rhetoric regarding it and those who defend it. *defense of AfD only serves to continue discussion on a topic which is fairly unimportant when measured against Wikipedia's real problems (e.g. failing dispute resolution mechanisms, assaults on Wikipedia [abetted by the media] by increasingly vocal and threatening individuals regarding content about them that they don't like). *defense of AfD, and the reaction to that, tends to make the atmosphere of this list far more "poisonous" than the "poisonous atmosphere" of AfD itself.
Jay.