There aren't enough people at "foundation level" to deal with them. They *have* to push them out to the people on the ground or they won't get done.
Yes! What I think we need is better communication between the foundation level people and the hard-working editors on the ground. Brief announcements on this mailing list in the form of "Problem X is really getting serious, let's solve it with solution Y" are not enough. We need some mechanism down on the wiki itself for the foundation level people to get important information across to everyone interested.
If you find that you roll out solution Y and it gets pounded with deletion votes within minutes then you're doing something wrong. You have to really make the case to people why problem X is serious and how solution Y will help. Or maybe you just describe the problem clearly and let the people on the ground figure out if solution Y, Z or W is the best one.
When good people have good information available they will act sensibly. Wikipedians are good people. Give us as good information as you can.
Regards, Haukur