Whether it's a democracy depends on what you think a democracy is. My view is that a democracy is a system where all voices are encouraged to speak up, are hear

Whether it's a democracy depends on what you think a democracy is. My view is that a democracy is a system where all voices are encouraged to speak up, are heard, given due consideration, and approved or rejected by a community. The whole voting thing is one particular implementation of democracy. It's not necessarily a good approximation of those democratic ideals, but it's practical and it scales well, which makes it Good Enough(tm). Wikipedia's policy of considering arguments rather than votes for page-level decisions is something I would call more democratic than straight-up vote-counting, given the scale that it operates at, the strict (and explicit--rule of law is important) guidelines by which positions are weighed, and the general good-faith of those making the judgments. YMMV. The definition of democracy is probably worth a thread in its own right. However, regardless of whatever label we each choose to call those policies, we're in accord that those policies are generally well-designed.