I don't think its about 'eliminating' per se, but simplifying the structure of how it is all written, shortening and removing unnecessary cruft and duplication (which there is tonnes of). For instance the common-sense things that currently have multi-page long guidelines to describe them like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Do_not_create_hoaxes and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Do_not_disrupt_Wikipe.... It would be easy to remove these as separate guidelines and to just include the pertinent text of them (prob. doesnt need to be more than a couple of lines) is a more major policy/guideline.

They could also do with creating a better front-end page for understanding/browsing the various policies and guidelines.