How about this for an experiment: turn off article creation _and_ deletion for a while? Freeze the table of contents (not that we have one)...
So that all anyone could possibly do is to edit existing articles?
It would force everyone to pay attention to the articles that exist already, and with 857,833 of them you'd think people could find something worth their attention.
With deletion being impossible, AfD would become unnecessary... as would DRV. So, that should make one faction happy. On the other hand, there would be no opportunity to add subtrivial topics. (Or trivial topics, or significant topics). That should make another faction happy.