I'm starting a small mod project that will involve removing several static meshes from the Tamriel worldspace. I'll also be removing a few insect "perches" as well.

Is it safe to just delete these, or should I check the initially disabled tag on all of them?

it will probably be safe to delete them, as long as you don't get any error messages popping up saying that the item is a reference in a quest or something, and as long as there isn't a big hole in the ground where you can fall through the world.

I would just move the object under the world so it's out of view. I know back in Oblivion, if one mod deleted a reference, and another mod modified that reference in ANY way, you would get a crash to desktop. So yes, either disable it, or move it out of sight.

So if I'm going to remove wildlife spawn points, I should disable them instead?

Yes, for spawn points, disable them.

I've removed a load of monster spawn points, plus a few statics, and not had a problem yet. But yes, disable is better practice.

Not to mention (at least in Fallout 3/New Vegas), deleting an object seemed to leave its LOD mesh in the same place. Moving the object moved the LOD as well.

These. Either disable it or move it. Do NOT delete vanilla references, as in all previous Beth games it caused CTD's and a bunch of issues. Do NOT delete them.

I've never had problems deleting vanilla references.

Then consider yourself lucky, I guess? I didn't mod Oblivion, but with both Fallout 3 and NV the instant I started deleted vanilla references from the worldspace I would get all sorts of crashes when walking around that area. It was a nightmare. I assume this could still be an issue, so it's good practice to avoid deleting things.

Is any static item also a reference? I only want to remove signposts, small rocks, bushes, that sort of thing.

Thanks for the input so far, guys.

Anything placed in the world. Don't delete spawns, objects, buildings, rocks, trees, fog effects, critter landing perches. Anything. Move it or disable it.

I've never modded (or played) Fallout 3 or NV, but this issue didn't exist in Oblivion (unless there was a mod conflict, then it might crash for some people).

Actually it did, but deletions resulting in CTDs only happened when you delete X, and a mod later in your load order edited X causing it's undeletion. The game itself often didn't care, but without fail, that led to the crash-on-exit issue that turned into such a huge mess. It's the entire reason TES4Edit has the "Undelete and Disable" option as part of the cleaning process.

I have no idea how bad this stuff might have been in Fallout. I did all of one mod for FO3 and never got F:NV. It would not surprise me at all if deletions resulted in CTDs.

As for Skyrim, I've deleted a few things here and there with no ill effects. I'll still feel more comfortable with getting a working cleaning process that disables the items instead. Deleting is much faster and generally harmless while you're developing. It's only once you release to the wild that you want to minimize these problems.

Does this also apply to vanilla navmeshes? Were you able to safely delete/modify them in FO3 and NV?

Edit: By delete/modify I mean triangles here and there to compensate for new objects, not deleting the whole cell's navmesh itself.

Bump

I safely did minor navmesh edits. I would add an entrance to my new land or something and would alter the navmesh to account for my new door/building and would finalize. That caused no issues so you should be able to do that safely.

I'm guessing the exterior cell you built in wasn't occupied by NPCs? I'm seeing that modifying the navmesh in a town or other populated area can quickly bug out their pathing, even if the navmeshing itself is efficient. It seems the NPCs don't like adapting.