From: Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin(a)gmail.com>
AFD is swarming with professional deletionists, and many deleted
articles were deleted with input mainly from editors whose main
contribution to Wikipedia is to vote to delete things. I question
whether this group of individuals fairly represents the Wikipedia
community, and therefore whether AFD actually arrives at community
consensus, except in obvious cases, and therefore call for admins to
exercise their judgment in evaluting AFDs for whether they reflect
true consensus, and also for admins to feel free to boldly undelete
articles that were clearly deleted in a manner which harms the
encyclopedia.
What is a "professional deletionist"? Is is a paid position? Does it require
annual certification?
I know that it has become popular to grill admin
candidates on their
criteria for "consensus" at AFD, and candidates who fail to meet the
standard that the deletionists have established as "reasonable" get
dogpiled with oppose votes. Frankly, I'm worried about this emergent
mob mentality, which I think is encouraged by having a caste of
professional deletionists, which is itself a consequence of having a
centralized deletion mechanism.
This "deletionist cabal" view of the way both RFA and AFD work does not
correspond to any sort of reality that I am aware of.
Jay.