It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a non-existent article.
Thus, we can effectively protect a deleted article without using the horrible {{deletedarticle}} template. Users get a reasonably helpful message telling them why it's not there, and it does not appear on Random, does not appear in mirrors, does not show up at the top of the Google hits (which will please the foiled vanity spammers as well as allowing us to be kind to them). I can't think of a downside offhand.
Guy (JzG)