On Feb 24, 2007, at 3:28 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
That absence of consensus alone contraindicates any kind of speedy action. When who shows up in a "speedy" situation that hour (not just that day) makes a difference there is just too much room for abuse. What happens with Brandt or any other person that wants an article about himself removed is only one little corner of the problem. A truly collaborative environment has no place for debates that depend on some kind of win/lose paradigm. Speedy deletes should never be a weapon for winning a POV war. Unless something is _immediately_ dangerous it can afford the time for due process. Immediate gratification is not important.
This gets at another very, very fundamental problem, though - one that is increasingly ripping the project apart at a foundational level. (I am not, it should be noted, speaking here on a community level. I'm talking about the encyclopedia itself.)
Our due process is capricious and based on who shows up. This is most obvious on AfD, where articles are serially renominated until they get deleted. The renominations are justified under the slogan "consensus can change," but in practice it's not consensus that changes - few of the people who voted keep the previous few times even show up to weigh in. That's not consensus changing - that's the equivalent of asking daddy if you can have a cookie because mommy said no.
-Phil