User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-26845762-20170713190006/@comment-24894325-20170713235408

I might add that this clarification just states the objective reality that sometimes it is necessary to close threads despite some or even most of the posts in it. This is not the preferred or even desired outcome. But sometimes it would have been a waste of everyone's time to try to solicit more opinions to sway consensus in another direction.

I'll give you a less cheesy example: Thread:145858. At the time I closed it, this thread contained 4 posts. And no one really disputed the opinion that it is unlikely to get more War Doctor stories beyond the 50th anniversary special. This stable state was achieved on 26 November 2013 and remained like that ever since.

Given that we did get more War Doctor stories (a lot in fact) and the template in question has long been recreated, there was absolutely no reason to reanimate this fossilised thread, to solicit sufficiently many voices from our editors and admins, whose time is indeed equally valuable, and to update the consensus to the reality of June 2017.

It is for such clear-cut, factually-based cases that the clause under discussion is primarily needed. Its other useful application is for cases when consensus requires something that is technically impossible.

In short, if continuing the discussion cannot possibly change its outcome, there is no reason to discuss for the sake of discussion.