User Deletes - Associated nodes cause problems

This problems appears to have been around for a long, long time. Dating back to 2005...but it seems to have never been resolved. Many topics have been created for it in the past...I'll leave just 1 link, but there's plenty of duplicates of it over the years: http://drupal.org/node/53348

The problem is that when a User is deleted, all the content which was associated with it is essentially lost as the UID is set to 0. The real problem here is that it breaks tons of modules, including mainstream ones like Views.

For example.
I create a regular user account and login. I create a node. That node is displayed on a very simple View where Node:Published is set to TRUE. I login to my Admin account, I delete the user account that I just created the node with. I go check out the View. Where that node would have been displayed before, it is now displaying "n/a" highlighted in pink (like an unpublished node). Likewise, that node is no longer accessible, even to me, as an Admin. Eg. Going to /node/31/edit will not work...page not found.

There's a few problems with this:

• First, that node should still be accessible if it wasn't deleted (it wasn't, supposedly it's set to user 'anonymous' according to the warning before deleting a user...according to the NODE table, the UID is now 0).
• Why is the Views showing "n/a" in pink (as if it were unpublished) when the View is set to only display Published nodes? Regardless of the publishing state, why is it showing "n/a" instead of the node when the node still exists...and if it shouldn't be showing, why is showing anything at all? Seemly, it is not actually set to unpublished or published...but rather some strange error is occurring.
• I am to assume there are numerous other problems occurring because of the state these nodes are left in after the user is deleted

Solution?
Something that certainly needs discussion given the number possible solution routes.

I think the most important part at the moment is to make sure things aren't left in such a crippled state. There is no use in a Delete user option if you are going to cripple sites by having such. Likewise though, I strongly believe there is a need to allow for cleanly deleting users and possibly even allow users to delete themselves. It's a major rights / privacy issue. At the very least, a way to remove personally identifiable information (name, email, etc) from the account.