[WClayFerguson]

There's nothing wrong with having a "PrepareDeleteUser" to pre-check if a user can be deleted. That's a legit design that you mention, but that does't validate these two silly criteria built into REST:

1) Everything is a noun. 2) You have a finite set of pre-defined verbs.

In my opinion, everything is not noun, and I don't want any verbs pre-defined by the stack.

I will always continue to use HTTP POST as the 'transport mechanism' to send a JSON request up and get a JSON response back. It's the simple and obvious way to do things, and after fully understanding REST (trust me I do get it, fully) my opinions remain unchanged.

There's a reason "functional programming" model dominates all software architectures, while state machines are rarely used in API design. All of the reasons functional programming is good on the same machine STILL APPLY even if the machine you're calling is remote.

And just because you're riding on top of HTTP over the web is no reason to intermingle your application layer code into HTTP-related stuff. Your API should remain unchanged even if HTTP were replaced by something else. Nothing about HTTP should affect one single verb or noun (function or object) in your entire application API...and if it does it's because you've been brainwashed by the REST cult. :)