Tony Sidaway wrote:

Absolutely not. We do things by consensus of en.wikipedia.

I completely agree with you. Consensus is entirely needed on such important policy issues. That is exactly why nofollow should be removed, following the debate and vote that was held. Implementing nofollow was a big change in how wikipedia interacts with the outside world and it was implemented in January without any debate whatsoever, let alone consensus. The debate and vote on en.wikipedia over this essentially endorsed the status quo prior to the unilateral change. The vote was the first time the community had been asked regarding the new implementation.

In the future, such software features "delay action" may be possible, to allow editors to remove spamlinks. The issue at hand, however, is how to proceed in the meantime. There was clearly no consensus to change the policy of wikipedia that had existed for four years prior to the unilateral change. On the contrary, the implementation of "no follow" was supported by only a minority of users (39%) who voted.