[WikiEN-l] Voting and "!voting", what's the difference?

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/8/28 Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway at gmail.com>:
> On 8/28/09, Al Tally <majorly.wiki at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Polling and voting is a good way to see what people think without having to
>> wade through a mass of comments.
>
> If you can't be bothered to engage in discussion, I agree that voting
> or "!voting" is the way to go.
>
> You can't build consensus by polling or "!polling".  You can't make a
> decision based on consensus if you can't be bothered to read.

You can't make a decision based on consensus when there are dozens of
interested parties, full stop. A true consensus requires everyone to
agree (or, at least, not object). That just isn't going to happen for
even vaguely controversial issues if there are dozens of people. That
is why things like RFA work on "rough consensus", which actually just
means a vote.