That would be fine, but there are some 'deletionists' out there that wouldn't be happy with that.

Some deletionists aren't happy with just reverting edits; they insist on actually deleting articles completely and forcing contributors to start over. I've seen this happen and it's like they actually enjoy destroying information more than creating it.

It's one thing to obsess over the quality of an article, but there are people who obsess not only over that, but also about what's in an article's edit history, and don't hesitate to call for total deletion of an article -- about as close to a book-burning as you can get, really -- in order to wipe out something they feel isn't important or just plain don't like.

It's sad, really, because Wikipedia always struck me as having a lot of potential. I still use it to look things up, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend any time contributing, just to have my work deleted out of hand.

I think the possibility of article rehabilitation is probably the best reason to do something like I suggested. Otherwise though a relegated article in my mind should be largely like a deleted one in that the main wikipedia can't link to it - but external links will still take you to the page which would be clearly marked as not in the real wikipedia.

I agree with your point about the extreme deletionists, I think if they couldn't irrevevocably destroy the work they would be a lot less interested in pursuing it with such vigor.