I understand entirely emergency measures; we should just try to explain people what is going on a minimum though. Those not on en: just can't guess.
Perhaps temporary measures should be accompanied by temporary warnings - a message, built into the software if necessary, that gives a reassurance that this is an emergency measure. Certainly something that needs considering whenever such a feature is implemented. [Not that I know what message *did* get displayed, but clearly it wasn't adequately informative, else this conversation wouldn't be happening.]
has now been changed to allow all but the most recently registered users to move pages.
Out of interest, is this being done by time, or by edits - can a user simply not access it for the first half hour / half day / whatever, or do they need to earn "experience"? Mind you, now I think about it I'm not sure there's much to choose between the two - neither the ability of a bot to get round it, nor the slight feeling of inequality created really varies. I'm guessing it's time-based, though, cos I can imagine how that might easily be codable.