From: Kelly Martin kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com
AFD is swarming with professional deletionists, and many deleted articles were deleted with input mainly from editors whose main contribution to Wikipedia is to vote to delete things. I question whether this group of individuals fairly represents the Wikipedia community, and therefore whether AFD actually arrives at community consensus, except in obvious cases, and therefore call for admins to exercise their judgment in evaluting AFDs for whether they reflect true consensus, and also for admins to feel free to boldly undelete articles that were clearly deleted in a manner which harms the encyclopedia.
What is a "professional deletionist"? Is is a paid position? Does it require annual certification?
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.
Jay.