Delirium (delirium(a)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.