I think it would be a mistake to think that you couldn't be ambushed by a deathfic on the Archive.
Even if there was a firm policy on such stories containing warnings, there are always stories which would have been uploaded before any policy existed. In the very early days, for example, there wasn't much policy on anything. Ratings weren't around to start with, for instance.
It's been so long since we've had a deathfic submitted (as far as I recall, before anyone feels the desperate urge to leap in and tell me we had one last week
) that I can't remember if I or Kathy ever issued a specific policy on them.
But as far as I'm aware it's just always been the case that we ask or recommend an author includes a warning in their notes at the start of the story.
Can't recall any author not agreeing, but if they did feel strongly that they didn't want a warning - because it spoiled a 'surprise' ending, say - then that would be entirely their choice.
Of course as it's a genre that doesn't really appear that often in FoLCdom, you're probably safe from this point on by default.
And if you're particularly concerned that the story you're reading might be deathfic, you can - as you say, Sheila - always skip ahead and check out the ending.
LabRat