Hi Gerard,
There is another aspect that is not considered. When you lock an item or a property how is a label in a language added that is still missing?
so who exactly talks about locking a whole item or property prophylactically? Wasn't pointed out several times that this discussion is about the careful lock of only single statements (!) that are not subject to any further changes?
More concretely: While the item about Barack Obama as a whole will probably change ever and ever again, the value of his birthday statement should never change: The current value is proven to be true and can't change by its nature. What would be the problem about protecting this specific value in this specific statement?
Of course, what Markus says is important: New users have to be informed properly and in an easy-to-understand way why they cannot change this value, and there has to be a possibility to report errors in "semi-locked statements" (e.g. on a central page).
Locking whole items with infinite length, though, is rarely a good idea, I think there is no dissent about that.
Cheers Yellowcard