G'day Blackcap, Such votes should not be counted, and as far as I'm aware generally are not counted (if I'm wrong, you can expect to see my newly-adminified arse on Deletion Review rather a lot over the coming months). WP:NOT a democracy, AFD:NOT a vote. -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/197 - Release Date: 9/12/2005

On 12/12/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: Doing things by the book means that conflict is controled. Stop doing things by the book and the conflict is widened and becomes less predictable. -- geni

On 12/12/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: The RFC *was* fuckheaded, but there might have been a point somewhere in the nonsense. That admins can execute as much discretionary power when it comes to what "consensus" means in an AFD is worrisome; it implies that the closing admin can alter the result of the vote substantially according to whatever arbitrary view he or she might have on deletion. Tony doesn't think this is a problem, because (I get the impression-- please correct me if I'm wrong here) that he's happy that he can close AFDs with an inflated standard for consensus, because he wants more articles to be kept. Whatever you think about the question of whether more articles need to be kept, it would be prudent to consider whether we want admins to make this kind of decision at all, in either direction. It seems contrary to the idea of what consensus means; it means that the closing administrator is really the one with the power, and the idea that the "normals" in the discussion have power is just an illusion. Now, this is why I think the RFC was fuckheaded: the RFC was really about a systematic problem with AFD, not Tony Sidaway's behavior. Tony's closing habits are, if anything, a symptom of the problem inherent in AFD, because it makes this kind of dispute even possible. Since what I'm providing here is yet another reason to think of AFD as borked and needing replacement, I don't expect much debate on these points. But I see a lot more discussion about how bad AFD is and a lot less discussion about what we should replace it with, and why whatever system we choose to replace it will be any better. Defense of AFD seems to be getting quieter and quieter but I still don't see us making much progress toward enacting some actual improvements. Ryan

On 12/12/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: Er, okay. So how about the rest of what I said? :-) Ryan

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Tony Sidaway wrote: It bothers me that you and David are ignoring my main point, so I'll try repeating it: I'm not using this email to make a judgment about what percentage you arbitrarily picked as a standard for what "consensus" means. The mere fact that administrators can decide for themselves is what bothers me, and if I am criticizing you, I am criticizing everyone (including myself, since I've closed a lot of AFDs). What troubles me is that the result of AFD votes -- the controversial ones that actually matter, anyway -- can be substantially influenced by the administrator who closes them. Say some contentious issue comes up on an AFD, say a series of "roadcruft" nominations. Now, the votes will be very close, but say we have 64% of people voting to delete. Some administrators, without doing the math, would close this as a delete. You certainly wouldn't. What does that say about the discussion process? Doesn't that mean the opinion of the closing admin on deletion standards weighs in more than anyone elses? This is what I'm getting at-- I think your case isn't an example of an admin abusing his power, but it is an example of what can go wrong with AFD *as a system*, and it actually goes wrong every day without anyone noticing. Ryan

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Tony Sidaway wrote: I totally agree with you here. I'm glad you brought the discussion here because it's a great place to make my next point. It's also a great way to clarify why my criticism of your RFC is a criticism of AFD and not of you. My point here is that by letting people vote, AFD creates the atmosphere that people are discussing the issue to find out what the consensus is. I view that as a farce. In reality, people tally votes, and the closing admin determines what percentage will count as "consensus" today. The fact that "there is no consensual definition of consensus" really means that people can't agree on what percentage of votes should count as consensus. But no percentage of votes could possibly count as a consensus. "80% of the votes = consensus" means "It's okay to roll over the opinions of 20% of the people if you have a big enough majority." That's not what consensus means. What happened in your RFC shows how people with differing arbitrary percentage standards of "consensus" can think they are "right" but have no rational basis for argument in support of their position. In my view, any numerical quantification of consensus is wrong, regardless of what number is picked. Consensus is a rational agreement among reasonable parties, and that means that people have reflected and discussed the issue and found a way to come to agreement. Because AFD creates this illusion of determining what consensus is, it perpetuates the myth that articles deleted by an AFD vote were deleted by a legitimate mandate of the community. In reality, it means anyone who can get enough votes can dictate policy to the minority without discussion, and without real consensus. Now you might be wondering why I said I agree with you. What I agree about is that I think admins should be greatly influenced by the rest of the community on what articles should be deleted, but I think the final decision should ultimately be in their hands. This is mainly why I am so strenuously advocating pure wiki deletion, with admins reserving the power of page protection, as a substitute for AFD. Pure wiki deletion is transparent in that it puts the power in the hands of the administrators explicitly, rather than claiming power for "the people" while implicitly leaving the decision in the hands of the closing admin. When an article is deleted under PWD, we know who is responsible for it and we can question their reasoning in an amicable and direct way. It also forces real discussion of deletion, just like the concept of the Wiki forces discussion of content edits, because it's no longer possible to delete an article just by getting enough votes to break over the "consensus" threshold. Imagine if we had votes for content edits: That would mean that the opinions of 1/3 people on Wikipedia don't matter! A nightmare, to be sure, but it's one that we're living under with AFD as relates to deletion. All of this isn't important, though. I happen to think that PWD is the best solution to the problem, but I would like to hear other ideas. Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention, but it occurs to me that I haven't heard many other people advancing alternate solutions. What I want to do is try to move the discussion toward what we will replace AFD with, and why the replacement will be any improvement. Ryan

On 12/14/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: Unbold the votes while you're at it. And remove any repetition, where multiple people say the exact same thing. Anthony

Anthony DiPierro wrote: You were being a dick in general around AFD, leading to you being banned from it, so I'm not surprised really. - d.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 David Gerard wrote: Have you been in AFD recently? It is a vote. It always has been. "Consensus" is determined, in EVERY afd, by counting the number of delete votes versus the number of keep votes. Period. I recognize that the policy says it's not a vote, but the policy might as well say the moon is made of cheese. Ryan

Mark Gallagher wrote: I've closed a lot more than a few dozen, and I've only resorted to counting votes once or twice. (This was after VfD was renamed AfD; somehow before that I think I counted votes a bit more often.) Usually once I notice I'm counting I start biting myself in the ass, though. I try to weigh the arguments instead of basing the decision purely on votecounting. Consensus is determined by both *limited* votecounting and weighing the value of the arguments put forth. (Let's face it, there has to be a bloody good case for someone to delete an article where there are 20 keep votes.) John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])