One of the problems with the current voting system is that people don't feel obligated to respond to arguments that are "obviously wrong".
I've seen a lot of AfD arguments where a clueless newbie comes in and says, "This page isn't hurting anyone and I spent a lot of time on it". It would be easy to post a reply, with quick pointers to [[WP:Verifiability]] and [[WP:NOT]], but half the time no one bothers. It's easier to just type " '''Delete''' nn -- ~~~~ ", after all. So the user is left with the impression that the decision process is arbitrary and mean.
I've been running into the other side of this on CfD. Someone nominated a bunch of categories that people were using on their userpages, including some sandbox pages of mine. I've asked several times why the pages are harmful, but people seem less interested in discussion when they're already winning the vote, and simply say that userpage organization "isn't what categories are for".
Should "no one addressed my argument" be a valid reason to not close a deletion request? I'm starting to think so -- most of the traditional arguments could be addressed with a quick wikilink, and anything that couldn't be handled that way should probably get talked about.
-- User:Creidieki