From: Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com
On 9/13/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
I know that it has become popular to grill admin candidates on their criteria for "consensus" at AFD, and candidates who fail to meet the standard that the deletionists have established as "reasonable" get dogpiled with oppose votes. Frankly, I'm worried about this emergent mob mentality, which I think is encouraged by having a caste of professional deletionists, which is itself a consequence of having a centralized deletion mechanism.
This "deletionist cabal" view of the way both RFA and AFD work does not correspond to any sort of reality that I am aware of.
Check out the number of admin candidates who were asked to specify their standard for AFD consensus by Hamster Sandwich. Sam Vimes got dogpiled when his answer was deemed unsuitable (although he may have been dogpiled for other reasons as well).
He *may* have been "dogpiled" for other reasons as well? I've looked over the RfA, and it is quite apparent that a majority of "Oppose" votes occurred before Hamster Sandwich even asked the question, and that *none* of the oppose vote rationales have anything to do with his response to Hamster's question, including Hamster's own vote. The only person who seems to have cared about the question at all was *you*, who voted "Support, to counterweigh against the oppose votes of the wikilawyers and the deletionist society."
JesseW was also interrogated closely, although he passed muster and was not dogpiled. Marianocecowski was interrogated. Scimitar was interrogated, but the question was removed when it was answered collaterally.
I looked over these votes as well; no-one seems to have cared about the responses to the question except Hamster Sandwich.
Hamser Sandwich seems to have discontinued this interrogation method, but I'm not pleased to see it happening.
In other words, *one* editor asked a question relating to this on *four* RfA pages, the RfA votes themselves seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with "deletionist" tendencies, and no-one has ever been "dogpiled" there for failing to meet some "deletionist" standard.
As I stated above, your "deletionist cabal" view of the way both RFA and AFD work does not correspond to any sort of reality that I am aware of, and this only strengthens my point.
Jay.