I have watched over a period of months while the number of protected
user pages has grown. Recently, I requested that a number of them be
unprotected and Guanaco and several others were willing to do this.
There has been a backlash. Apparently there are a number of wikipedians
who believe in the patently non-wiki notion that they "own" their user
space and should be able to lock it up so that other users can't edit
it.
Others have taken the step further and there is (I'm not making this up
folks) a suggestion that we change the software to disallow all edits
to user pages except by their "owners." Discussion, including calls
for a "vote" on this change can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Protection_policy
There is also discussion there of the lesser measure of changing policy
to permit any admin to protect their own user pages indefinitely for no
reason other than personal whim.
UninvitedCompany