(When we're done with this discussion we could move onto the fact that both of today's articles are hard-full-protected and how nice it would be if we were using revision flagging with display-flagged instead...)
It was unavoidable in this case - flagged revs would certainly have been a better solution. We'll get there eventually!
I'd like to see a consensus demonstrated that flagged revs would have been better here because even past proposals to use them strictly as a replacement for protection have come under fire.
I know... I've never understood that. I'm not sure the people doing the firing actually understood the proposal.