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- You may be looking for the related guideline, Wikipedia:Canvassing.
Fundamental to Wikipedia is the concept of consensus. Proposals and suggestions that might be contentious must generally achieve consensus before being implemented. Most changes to Wikipedia are probably uncontroversial, and most of the rest can be discussed in an ad-hoc manner on the appropriate talk page, but in the case of certain proposals that are both routine and likely to be contentious, we have established various fora for discussion and polling to determine whether consensus exists: Articles for deletion, Requests for adminship, and so forth.
No matter what we do, such discussions will involve only a tiny percentage of active Wikipedians. This is unavoidable. The results, however, should ideally reflect the views of all Wikipedians, not just those who happen to stop by—polls are not "votes", where everyone in a certain group gets one vote if they choose to exercise it. Certainly, those who are more interested in the subject matter deserve a greater say, and they receive it by natural selection bias. This is fine; discussions should be as informed as possible.
But in some cases, users who favor one side try to skew the outcome of the poll by inviting a large number of people to support their view, when otherwise those people wouldn't have come. As far as discussion goes, the more the merrier, but in the interests of determining whether this microcosm of Wikipedians is in accord with Wikipedians as a whole, it's important to know who was invited to participate. Skewing toward those knowledgeable and interested in the subject matter is good, but skewing toward those more willing to electioneer and form factions is not.