Consequences of deleting .DS_Store If I manually delete a .DS_Store file from a directory, what's the worst that can happen?  What important information might I lose?
.DS_Store files are only used by the Finder to hold custom view settings for that particular folder. In most cases nothing will happen if you delete them, or at worst custom Finder view settings (icon size, position, background color, etc) will be lost.

If you are trying to maintain a 'spatial Finder' experience in OS X, you might care more, but for most users no change will be noticed.