Matt Brown said:
I am much in favor of your suggestion that nominations at VfD that do not reference a reason listed in the deletion policy should be removed forthwith.
Doesn't seem too unreasonable. However I conceive of deletion policy as being more than just the words in the policy document. In practise there are occasions when there is consensus to delete but nobody can agree what item of deletion policy applies. This isn't a mistake--people can genuinely hold different opinions on whether a given item qualifies. I see VfD, in this conception, as a kind of ad hoc court system. A beauty contest, if you like. It's not ideal, but items that don't easily fit into the written deletion policy are generally harder to get consensus to delete, so it does work reasonably well most of the time. I think the flexibility is good.