Anthony DiPierro wrote:

Erik had a proposal well over a year ago which would look something like this. In essence, a nomination would have to give a clear reason (which was already agreed upon by consensus), and the votes/discussion would be solely limited to whether or not the nominated article fit within that reason.

When the question being debated or voted on leads directly to an outcome (in this case, possible deletion of an article), it's virtually impossible to get people to ignore the outcome and limit their votes/opinions to the reasoning presented. Even in the appellate courts of the United States, a system where the participants have devoted most of their lives to this kind of approach, it only partly works. Many cases are not decided by the arguments of counsel, or those set forth in the court's opinion, but by things that are never put into words.

--Michael Snow