Two, we need to place to discuss the stuff before deleting possibly contentious articles. Turning it off will spark deletions regular users didn't have a say in. It takes away the place it should be discussed at.
If you want to delete something, what's wrong with taking long enough to get it right? Five days is not enough. People who can't be fucked to tell the article creator are manifestly not taking sufficient care, but try adding that to deletion policy and see how far you get.
Yes, I want to do it right, make the listing time longer. Hell, if I can I'll inform the author, I will. This quote of mine referred to shutting off AFD. What I'm worried about is the backlog we are creating by shutting off AFD without any sort of backup to replace it with. We can expand speedies and try alternative methods, but we need a backup in place and running in case it falls flat.