Granted, the post I made in the other thread contained an opinion, but so did the Concutator's. I think the people who are suggesting to shut off AFD as an experiment are trying to solve a problem by addressing the wrong symptoms. So with this post, I'll try to dig up the motives behind the idea. 1. Deletion is a neccesary evil. Even Kappa, who is considered extremely inclusionist by a lot of wikipedians, occasionally uses AFD to list something, so there's clearly deletions by policy that need to happen yet are not covered by speedy criterions. AFD is the only recourse which allows all Wikipedians to have their say on the issue in an ordered manner right now and has additional benefits I list below. (Cuncatator, would you agree with this?) 2. Speedy criterions need to be objective which is why formulating them is so hard. It's simply impossible to make anything that should be deleted speediable, because deletion policy requires interpretation. There's almost always exceptions to the rule. 3. Deletion will create ill-feelings no matter how they are dealt with. People who created the article or care about the subject of one may feel 'bitten'. Regardless whether we use Pure Wiki Deletion, Uncontested Deletion, AFD, Speedy or any other matter. 4. AFD show contested articles to a larger public and often lead to evidence being produced which wouldn't otherwise been found and the saving of an article which would otherwise have been deleted. Any method like Pure Wiki Deletion would require you to dig through your watchlist and Recent changes on a daily basis to see if any articles you care about have a deletion discussion going. 5. Central listing avoids nominated articles from hiding in obscurity if disgrunted editors or vandals remove a template something which cannot be done with categories or any other method I've heard suggested so far. 6. It's not the fact that all the deletion discussion are listed at AFD that is causing the ill-feelings but the actions and reactions of certain editors. Discontinuing AFD for any length of time would not address these feelings. All these points (facts as far as I can tell) indicate, to me, we should be focussing on how people act on AFD and how authors of deleted content take it rather than get rid of the process itself. Could any of the people suggesting turning off AFD say which of the facts I list here, they don't agree with. I would also like to see some facts countering my points and tell me why AFD should stop (even temporarily) rather than adjusted or refined. Mgm