The Gnome Human Interface Guidelines say, "if pressing this button by mistake could cause a loss of data, do not set a default button for the window. Do not make Cancel the default button instead." So I changed our account deletion dialog to not have a default action. For things like deleting a buddy or a certificate I think it makes sense to have the default be "yes" because it's much less severe than deleting an account (which deletes your buddies, contacts, etc).