G'day Sam,
On 11/19/05, Jack Lynch jack.i.lynch@gmail.com wrote:
everybody considers a merge vote as a de-facto keep vote, because thats what the rules say. If they think otherwise they are mistaken.
Please cite this rule and tell me which everyone thinks this. I had thought "everybody" meant that all the members of a community, or at least a very large supermajority. Once again, I fear you are moulding the facts until they become *your* facts.
The rules do *not* say that merge == keep.
I think it depends whether you look at it from a content- or page-based POV. Those who want merges generally want the content kept, so they can't be considered fans of deletion. However, they certainly don't want the page kept (indeed, some will even ask for the article to be deleted, rather than left as a redirect ... presumably this will involve some ultra-complicated wacky history merge thing).
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.
In any case, at the end of the day, it's just an article on a website (albeit, a super-mega-happy-awesome website). I'm not going to lose any sleep over a page being kept, deleted, merged, BJOADNed, or anything else (well, I might get upset if [[Lang Hancock]] is deleted ...).
Cheers,