Delirium (delirium@hackish.org) [050804 06:01]:
The problem with the proposals to do away with it is that none so far has proposed anything better (or at least people haven't been convinced the alternative proposals are better). There is plenty of stuff that goes through VfD that ought to be deleted; only a small percentage of the stuff on VfD is contentious in any way.
I sincerely believe the current VFD process and culture is so poisonous to Wikipedia that, at least for the moment, we would be better just letting the disks fill with band vanity, original research and poo jokes.
If VfD is done away with and no alternative deletion process is provided, then those types of pages will simply be speedy-deleted. In itself that would be fine, since the majority are obvious, but having a VfD process helps sometimes IMO, because occasionally an admin will mis-identify something as an obvious deletion candidate when it really shouldn't be, and others will point out his error before the page is actually deleted.
I strongly agree we need a deletion mechanism - no-one's who's done Special:Newpages patrol could possibly disagree IMO. And over 95% of what hits VFD needs a sudden and painful death.
But VFD as it exists is sick and diseased and a powerful net negative.
- d.