The first experience for new users to the English Wikipedia

I really like the idea of moving an article into the author's userspace rather than deleting it. :-) imo that would solve a lot of frustration and anger problems, and not just with newbies. Even if the article isn't suitable at all for Wikipedia, the author might want to put it in a blog or an email or something. Who knows? Deleting it totally is adding insult to injury, and really is unnecessary. (I feel the same way about so-called 'merges' which actually consist of deleting one article while leaving the other as is. They're properly called 'deletes and redirects', but some Daleks realized they could get more buy-in if they suggested articles be 'merged' rather than 'exterminated'.) As for 'restoring' a deleted article, I did that once and only got the latest version. Which was not at all useful as the content had been edit-warred over for months. I was 'helpfully' told it was my own fault and I should keep copy of all my edits. As if. ;-)