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grape_surgeon | 1 year ago
Wikipedia doesn't establish consensus by pure numbers or voting, although it is a contributing factor. In disputes, it has moderated discussions with verdicts given by elevated users, including admins. Things like statistics and even (perhaps especially) precedent all weigh in. Popularity of a side can be weighted, but ruling purely based on popularity is actively discouraged.
This can lead to scenarios where 90% of users want something, but the moderater rules along with the 10%. Often, this happens when the discussion was initially among a bunch of relatively new users who aren't aware of some policy, and a more experienced editor points that a dispute is clearly not in line with some policy. This happens very regularly and is often a source of drama with long discussions.
This process actually arguably works better on popular and contentious pages; you get eyes and discussions of substance on those. Most boring pages are virtually ghost towns and are counterintuitively more susceptable to popularity-based consensus. Whatever you put up will likely stick, so it's just a matter of how many people and who will protect the page for the longest.
Also read this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie....
The second page addresses your concern about not giving too much weight to fringe theories. It's not enforced as well as it could be in many places though; it can be hard to judge what's due or undue weight.
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