Erik Moeller wrote:
This confirms my intuition that long term page protection is used excessively on the German Wikipedia. [...] One immediate effect, besides stagnation, is that sysops become far more relevant in the power structure, as they are the only ones who can add information to articles after protection. Instead of being janitors, they become editors. This, I believe, must have social repercussions beyond the articles concerned.
Given these concerns, which certainly could be taken as a criticism of the German Wikipedia's methodology, I'm surprised you didn't post this to wikide-l.