This is a spinoff of the discussion thread here.
It appears that some mod/admin staff have begun locking a large number of pages for relatively small reasons. Some of whom were unaware that no one except mods and admins can edit locked pages (IE, the author cannot do so).
I'm unhappy with mods/admins locking their own personal pages as well, because it's mods and admins essentially getting special editing and page protection privileges.
It's not the biggest deal when it's a mod or admin, but every time it's been done in the past, it's backfired in some way. It does seem to contradict site policy that users can edit spelling and minor errors in articles in general. If Roget started locking his articles for similar reasons, for example, lots of typos would be missed — and permanently so if he stopped regularly checking discussion threads (which he might have, given how many articles he's written).
It makes sense to lock something like 682 (which has had dozens of inappropriate edits IIRC and has a testing log that people should be adding to instead) or 173 (which should flatly never be edited again except by staff), or the Bright list (which has had hundreds of bad edits and is no longer collaborative) but most pages on the site should not ever be locked by default.
THAT ASIDE.
Locking the articles of users (or non-mod staff) is a significant issue, since it totally removes their ability to edit their articles. This is… very, very bad, and a major violation of user rights, with or without a PM asking them if they're gonna tell you to stop (users are most likely going to want to go along with staff wishes).
At minimum, it looks like we're going to need to go through and unlock all those pages that have been locked that weren't locked by the page creator themselves (excepting the ones that have a special, major reason to stay locked).
That's what must happen. What I would suggest should happen is that no pages should be locked without public discussion on O5.
I also like this because in the past few years, mods & admins have consistently been (unintentionally and non-maliciously) doing things like locking the site's collab logs (682's termination log has been the biggest offender) and preventing any new edits, in direct violation of authorial wishes, and leaving it like that for months or years until an admin comes in and huffs exasperatedly about it and unlocks all the pages again. This admin has been me too many times, and I don't want to keep doing that and I don't think admins should be micromanaging that way as a matter of policy in general.
If page locking has to be discussed on O5 (and preferably if it's only rarely done), that helps solve the issue, because it won't get missed if you don't lurk Recent Posts every single day.
Along with this, I would also suggest that all page locks by mods/admins of their own articles be removed unless there's a special reason to keep them on there, one which is listed on O5, and preferably a reason beyond just a couple bad edits.
I think that temporary (week-/month-long) page locks can be a thing too, for current vandal targets. That would be a good option for pages which got 2+ bad edits in the past month.
Anqxyr's page would be a good central hub for that, and easy enough to go through regularly and remove expired locks. (Locks that were accidentally left on for too long aren't as big of a problem as expired bans, if it's not a major collab page, so we probably don't need more of a system than that.)
(account deleted)