Filtering: make a 24 hour wait before nominations go public at AfD, so that admins can do speedy deletes and keeps.
Mediated: sort noms with admin sponsors to delete from those which are not speedied but have no support either way.
Sort: by relevant WikiProject for example. Nominator's responsibility. Make sorted noms a crisper process.
Categorise: why this nomination?
All excellent suggestions! Have these ideas been raised before? It seems these *could* go a long way to smoothing things out at AfD.
All excellent suggestions, but keep in mind that nominating something for deletion is already a strenuous process for a lot of people. We have to make sure it's still manageable to do so for a newbie.
--Mgm