[WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

Mon Jan 30 05:24:27 UTC 2006

This is an interesting one. An article "List of state-named Avenues in
Washington, D.C." was listed for deletion recently but kept because of
no consensus.  Someone thought "dang it, AfD is supposed to be a
discussion, not a vote", and went to Wikipedia:Deletion review (DRV)
to try to overturn the result for what he thought were weak arguments
to keep.

Well that's all very well, but DRV (perhaps uniquely in all Wikipedia
forums) does not operate by consensus but by majority vote.  So it
looks to me like we've got a possible loophole where someone
dissatisfied with an AfD result can go and have the article deleted
anyway on a straight majority vote.  As it happens a lot of people who
looked at the article in DRV thought it should be deleted (which isn't
unusual--it's part of the culture in DRV)

So, I thought I'd give a second AfD a go. If the first AfD wasn't
clear enough, let's try for a second. I accordingly relisted the
article for deletion, explaining the circumstances and recommending
keep.

Six people promptly said "keep".

Whereupon someone involved in the attempt to overturn the first
deletion discussion and delete the article "unlisted* the article from
AfD.

This is quite a quandary.

I've no doubt that this fellow is acting in good faith and genuinely
believes that we cannot have a second AfD while the first is being
reviewed, but I cannot see why not especially if (as seems here) it's
clarifying that yes, Wikipedians really do want this article to be
kept.

However he's not really granting good faith, is he?  He's removed the
second AfD listing. I restored once but I don't edit war so I'm not
going to get into that stuff.

So I turn to you, dear readers.

How am I to ensure that, if this article is deleted, it is only
deleted on the basis of consensus?