sprot only blocks IP and brand new addresses from editing it does not stop anyone from reading nor does it stop anyone who wants to contribute to create an account with an unidentifiable and untraceable name i e don t give your email address and contribute The edits made by multiple IP addresses on this page as you know have been not always but by and large at best unhelpful but much more often downright offensive and I see absolutely no reason why that should be allowed to continue Again you know I am not talking about the juvenile HI MOMs they are also annoying but that is not what plagues this page We are plagued by targeted vandalism changing Obama to Osama for example and the regular changing of text that has hidden text clearly requesting that it not be changed right there plus blatant POV pushing trolling etc Classic case for permanent sprot The result when sprot is in place is the ability to conscientiously edit and improve the article which has a changing base of facts so needs constant attention But rather than being able to easily evaluate substantive changes that responsible editors make we are bogged down in having to go through screen after screen of pure and often vicious vandalism For what positive reason may I ask IP edits also can be used I suppose by regular editors who don t want to reveal that they are making sub rosa changes but I would hope that is not going on here And IP addresses have quite rarely reverted vandalism here in fact I just looked at the last 500 edits and didn t see a single case of an IP address reverting vandalism Maybe I missed one but that claim was not really reflective of what goes on on this page it is a very small group of actual editors who do the vast majority of the reverting Your comment above about there being only one vandalism on Dec 21 was just one day after sprot was lifted the last time I said then that I hoped to be wrong but predicted that vandalism would be back up and it is That s why I requested extended protection If what you were unhappy about is the tag itself I also thought all along that we should have sprotect2 and had thought to change it last time but the block was lifted before I had a chance to I have changed it to that less obtrusive tag The question of the duration of the lock is what I am interested in Two three weeks is much better than what we had a few weeks ago and may coincide with any announcement that Senator Obama makes which is also good timing for sprot but I d like to understand why you would want it not to be an extended one because I can t make any sense out of your position on this as a person you I mean who clearly is interested in having this remain a high quality page as evidenced by the excellent work you do here and the fact that this page has been by far your main area of Wikipedia editing talk