So how about scrapping afd/vfd and replacing with a system whereby an editor may tag an article with a 'candidate for deletion' tag and provide a rationale. Admins can patrol the resulting category, assess each case, delete as necessary. If someone disagrees with the deletion, they can either contact the admin who deleted to ask them to review their decision, or if they want wider community input there's vfu (which could be renamed afu?)
This seems to me to have the following advantages: 1. It would de-centralise the process if people mainly contact the deleting admin to query deletions. This would avoid a giant page of bad feeling. 2. An article on vfd might only attract 4-5 votes, which is not enough to really determine community consensus and so much is kept that probably should be deleted when things end with 'no consensus'. However, if things were deleted more quickly and restorations requested on vfu, the vfu decision would result in restoration if there was a clear consensus to include. If an article does not attract sufficient community input to determine consensus then it would remain deleted.
Any thoughts?
WT