I understand very well you feel punished as a regular user. I feel that when I look at the POV english main page news :-) I feel that when a personal page stays listed for 2/3 weeks before being deleted. Imho, everyone should have the right to delete pages in her user space :-) I feel that when I can't rename an article just because there is a redirect with no history under the name I want to give to the new article :-) I feel that when I can't look at the content of a very recently deleted article :-)
If you are doing all that and feeling that way then you need to either become an Admin or stop complaining. I'm sick of hearing complaints that you can't do certain things and then you refuse to become an Admin so that you can do those things. This makes zero sense!
If /anyone/ is dong so much Wikipedia work that they feel a need to have Admin powers then just ask. Bing! You are an Admin. Wow - was that so hard? You can now do all the things which cannot be trusted to random people (or to the Lirs and Micheals of the world).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)