This has also been my experience (improper flagging for speedy deletion, deleted by RHaworth) a few months ago.
I have now vowed to never contribute to Wikipedia again other than anonymous word-smithing. Yes it’s that bad. The deletionists are in the majority and it is much easier to delete pages than create them.
I would think there is a technical solution to this. With the open APIs available from Wikipedia, it should be possible for another site to ‘skin’ Wikipedia with additional edits and articles. Initially links would lead to identical pages, but over time as articles are added or edited a divergent git-type branch is created that would supersede the original. Its premise, I think, should be that nothing gets deleted - only versioned.
