I think the idea of blanking the article and redirecting is a brilliant one. It is easilly reversable, and allows quick decisions to be made by anyone, which can just as easilly be discussed and reverted, or not. The only thing we would need is a handful of pages to redirect to. I strongly endorse this idea and suggest it be brought before the community to '''discuss''' (rather than instantly vote on ;)
Jack (Sam Spade)
Heh, y'know we could do the pure wiki deletion thing right now, without the links-going-red thing. I've not checked but I bet a lot of VfD candidates don't have many incoming links.
The only problem with articles that could need deletion, I believe, is the chance of them showing up in searches. Diskspace etc doesn't matter. To stop stuff getting searched whenever the index is updated, is just to blank the article.
We could delete VfD again and do this right now. Debates about blanking held on talk pages. We could put a blank articles make links red thing in later.
Dan