The amount of people on both sides matters for how conflicts are resolved. If someone else already made an argument adding your position in addition is helpful.
On controversial topics, a few persons arguing can already produce an article’s length of points. How can a newcomer weigh in? There is (generally) no vote. You can just add more points. For those points to have a slight chance of being relevant, you need to read all the discussion and the rules referred to. And then someone will point that you forgot a yet-unmentioned-rule, and your words will only add to the noise and make it more difficult for the next one to weigh in.
There’s no formal vote but if you have a page where two people have a long discussion of A vs B and a few other people take position A (and write a sensible comment—“I support A” might not be enough) but no additional person takes position B according to Wikipedia policy there’s consensus for A.
Then when the page gets changed to A it’s invalid for anybody to switch it to B. The lines around what counts as consensus are a bit fuzzy but in general that’s the decision making process. If people don’t agree on what consensus is conflicts can be escalated.
On controversial topics, a few persons arguing can already produce an article’s length of points. How can a newcomer weigh in? There is (generally) no vote. You can just add more points. For those points to have a slight chance of being relevant, you need to read all the discussion and the rules referred to. And then someone will point that you forgot a yet-unmentioned-rule, and your words will only add to the noise and make it more difficult for the next one to weigh in.
There’s no formal vote but if you have a page where two people have a long discussion of A vs B and a few other people take position A (and write a sensible comment—“I support A” might not be enough) but no additional person takes position B according to Wikipedia policy there’s consensus for A.
Then when the page gets changed to A it’s invalid for anybody to switch it to B. The lines around what counts as consensus are a bit fuzzy but in general that’s the decision making process. If people don’t agree on what consensus is conflicts can be escalated.