<aol>Me too!</aol> I agree wholeheartedly with Phil, including the rest of the email that I've snipped. The main problem is that people love to vote; and "my vote is to..." is a shorthand that continues to imply that we're voting. (I've started to use "My opinion is..." and the like to make it clear that I'm not voting). We deny new users and anons a "vote" on AfD to prevent "votestacking" by sockmeat, thus dismissing what could be a very knowledgeable vote once in a while; we sometimes announce at the top of a debate that we will be ignoring votestacking by anons, thus reinforcing the impression of a vote taking place. AfD is often just putting a mark in a box - nn, del or keep, WP:V - which again reinforces the idea that we're voting /and/ newbies with their first article suddenly feel bitten because the community is /voting/ against /them/. I think we need to make it clearer that the process is not a vote; that reasoned arguments are appreciated (and therefore that unreasoned arguments - Xfoo has an article so Yfoo deserves one; John Foobar is well-known to all my friends in the greater Nowheresville area who are into mud wrestling; Wikipedia must keep my article else I'll leave before my 3rd edit - don't hold water); and that the final decision is made by an admin based on the debate and /other factors/, not on the tally of "votes". We also need greater protection for our admins from being hounded for deleting an article where the majority said keep or for keeping an article where the majority said delete - some sort of nice big notice somewhere that says "admins are just janitors, not gods or new Hitlers - please take your argument to [[X]] location" perhaps? At the moment, I really can't see a difference between the old VfD and the newer AfD, other than cosmetic ones. Unless we do something to make it clear that voting is not taking place, we'll be stuck with the current broken process. "Wikipedia:Opinions about removal", anyone? =REDVERS= ___________________________________________________________ NEW - Yahoo! 360 – Your one place to blog, create, publish and share! http://uk.360.yahoo.com