The info of the [tag:discussion] tag here on Meta reads:

> The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.

How do we define “consensus” when it comes to meta discussions?

It’s obviously complicated, so let’s just imagine a discussion with only two literal answers “Yes” and “No”. I suppose the easiest way to reach consensus is counting votes, but:

1. How exactly do we count?  
Do only upvotes count, or do we take the displayed vote score (upvotes-downvotes)? If the latter, what if a user upvotes one answer and downvotes the other one?
1. When do we call it a community consensus?  
Does the highest voted answer reflect the community’s opinion from the moment the question is posted on? Or does an answer need a certain vote count? Which?

What do we do with questions with just one answer, does this automatically become consensus when it reaches a certain vote count? Which?

<sub>A Meta discussion about Meta discussions – Inception</sub>