I think what people are trying to say is that we have a growing number of articles and they can't keep up with it. So the intention is removing them in bulk/protecting them in bulk so keeping up with them is possible. No one has said this but this is something implied overal.
I think this is fundamentally flawed. We have plenty of articles in terrible condition. Improving an article does not require a deletion.
If you can't keep up with the articles, you probably are not working collaboratively enough. Why is vandalism hardly a problem? There are groups of users that work together to tackle the problem. Why is POV pushing and low quality articles are a problem? Hardly anyone works on those. And those do work cure the problem by killing it. It is definitely not wise to kill a mosquito with a howitzer gun. That's whats happening.
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. I do not believe anybody including me on this thread had mentioned any constructive ideas so far.
-- White Cat