At 06:11 PM 5/31/2010, David Goodman wrote:

The assumption in closing is that after discarding non-arguments, the consensus view will be the correct one, and that any neutral admin would agree. Thus there is in theory no difference between closing per the majority and closing per the strongest argument. But when there is a real dispute on what argument is relevant, the closer is not to decide between them , but close according to what most people in the discussion say. If the closer has a strong view on the matter, he should join the argument instead of closing, and try to affect consensus that way. I (and almost all other admins) have closed keep when we personally would have preferred delete, and vice-versa.

My argument has been similar on this. Wikitheory would suggest that no admin should close a discussion with a result that the admin does not agree with, so it does a little further than what David suggests. I'd even say that an admin who, after reading the discussion and reviewing the evidence, is neutral, *should not close.* If there is a consensus, say, for Delete, and that represents true broader consensus, surely there will be an admin who agrees to close.

I agree that if the admin has a strong opinion or general position making it reasonably possible that the decision will be biased (some people can actually discern this!) the admin should instead comment. Generally, an admin who comments with a position should not then return and close, I've seen this violated only a few times. With a ban discussion actually, and it was a real problem, in my view.

And the reason for this is quite simple. The least disruptive way to review a deletion is to ask the deleting administrator to reconsider it. The theory suggests that the one who closes has the authority to change the decision based on new evidence or argument. When an admin closed on the basis of "consensus" purely, we have a closer who will often refuse to change the decision because "the community made the decision, not me."

But when the administrator is part of that community, and closed on behalf of that community, the administrator represents it in changing his mind, based on new additional evidence and argument. This can avoid a lot of DRV discussions! I've seen it work, and I've also seen the "not my decision" response.

The theory of the adhocracy that is Wikipedia depends on the responsibility of the executives -- the editors and administrators who act -- for their own decisions. No decisions are properly made by voting, per se, most notably because there is a severe problem with participation bias. If we wanted to use voting, we'd need quite a different structure, which may be advisable, in fact, as a hybrid, used where it's necessary for voting to represent true community consensus. In an organization that is the size of Wikipedia, that would almost certainly be some kind of elected representative body, and there are ways to do this without actual "elections" as we know them. Simple ways, in fact.

Short of that, we have the efficiency of ad hoc decision-making by individual administrators, expected to self-select for initial neutrality.

I've seen closing admins change their mind and undelete based on new evidence and argument, and a Delete voter in the AfD discussion got upset that the admin was "defying consensus." But I"ve never seen such a decision reversed at DRV, nor by a new AfD with a different closer. Perhaps it's happened, but, if the admin was truly following arguments and policy, it should be rare. Thus the disruption of another discussion is avoided unless someone is really pissed and pursues it, and, after a while, this can become obvious, such editors don't last long, usually.