On De, however, I perceive a much more homogenous distribution of opinions among the sysops. Since it was a sysop who made the edit, and since sysops are trusted users, the edit was probably trustworthy. Since there are often no other sysops disputing/opposing the edit, it doesn't matter that the edit was of a much greater significance/magnitude than some edits that spark violent edit wars. This (among many many other things) encourages existing sysops to make sure the community of sysops remains broadly like-minded, and this in turn encourages the view that dissenting non-sysop editors are just vandals, and encourages the sysops to keep the page protected. Hence, as Erik said, "sysops become far more relevant in the power structure" and "instead of being janitors, they become editors". Timwi
The same can be said of Polish Wikipedia, although here we do not protect as many pages as at de:.