Wikipedia:Wisdom of the crowd

The more editors there are in a discussion, the more certainty there can be about the relative quality of the arguments presented. Stronger arguments will mean more people are persuaded and indicate that position as their preference. Or the fact that there is not a consensus will become clear by relatively equal number of editors coalescing around differing options. The larger the crowd of editors the more this becomes apparent and thus our evidence of consensus is clearer. The wisdom of the crowd can make itself known. While consensus is formed through discussions not votes on Wikipedia there's a point where the discussion ends or becomes repetitive. At that point, the strength of argument can be seen simply by editors bolded choice.

The consensus policy recognizes this quality of consensus by noting that there are levels of consensus. Levels of consensus informs us that the wider the scale of editors involved the more we can know that it represents the will of the community and the correct interpretation of policies and guidelines. While that specifically talks about where a discussion is taking place, the same principle is true even in project-wide discussions. For instance, at Articles for deletion if 2 editors support deletion and 1 editor supports keeping the article the discussion will often be closed as no consensus. However, a discussion where 12 editors support deletion and 6 support keeping the article will often be closed as delete despite the percent supporting deletion being the same in each instance (2/3s). This same principle can also be found in other consensus finding discussions including requests for comment and even requests for adminship.