Risker wrote:
There are some opportunities to improve practices here, and to really take a look and decide which articles (and rarely, article talk pages) need this indefinite protection. At the same time, I really do believe that if an admin is going to reduce protection on a page with an extensive history of problems, he or she has a responsibility to keep an eye on the page for at least a couple of weeks afterward to ensure there isn't a fresh outbreak of inappropriate behaviour.
Agree with both points, naturally. But the discussion as a whole seems to indicate that "protection" has become one of our more Byzantine concepts. Some work ought to go on, simplifying it from a hypertext stance (categorisation and tagging), so that what happens is more transparent. Anyone interested in reviewing the system and writing an on-site essay?
Charles