Jclemens take on AfD closes
When I close an AfD, several things influence my view of consensus:
- SNOW is not used enough. If things look hopeless for one side, SNOW puts an end to the drama and ends the AfD before any more tempers flare, feelings get hurt, and/or the AfD queue gets bogged down with fait accompli. Most importantly it gives the people time to go back to writing encyclopedic content.
- The bar for SNOWing an AfD keep is lower than for SNOWing it delete. After all, if there's still time for the article to be rescued, someone might still do it. The obvious exceptions are things that might have been good speedies but didn't quite fit the criteria, or PRODs that were deprodded despite the prod rationale being accurate.
- I do not reverse SNOW closes unless I'm convinced that the outcome was wrong. I will occasionally get the process wrong--or simply ignore it on purpose when process doesn't matter. I'm not afraid of people taking my closes to DRV. I've deleted nearly 19,000 articles, and not yet had any of them (and only one of my keep closes, for that matter) overturned at DRV. The day I screw up and fail to accurately judge the community's reaction to a BOLD move I made is the day I deserve to lose that perfect record.
- If I delete something, I will almost always userify it for an interested party to work on. If such a party vandalizes my page, makes ad hominem attacks, or open a DRV without talking to me first... then s/he is free to find another admin to help. Obviously, copyvios, attack pages, and BLP material are excluded.
- Relisting is like sudden death: a few !votes after relisting may quickly create a consensus situation where one did not exist before.
- A second relisting should almost always have been a "no consensus" close. I will often fix them to be such when I see them.
- A large amount of good-faith editing, with or without the {{afdrescued}} tag, renders prior !votes that addressed the issues fixed by the revisions moot, unless those !voters return after the revision and reaffirm their dissatisfaction with the revised article.