i know the elements articles are a pita and involve a lot of defense from vandals and wp nor failers it's not something i want to do otoh it's a hard length to defend based on my non elements experience at rfpp i'll dial it back and post a note on the talk page but ultimately i won't be watching it so feel free to change it back if it becomes necessary as far as amount of vandalism is concerned here are my top indications that protection is needed see also wp rough extreme vandalism compare to the daily featured article but generally unique ips in hours or unique ips per day over a slightly longer period sockpuppetry if protecting the article is easier than an ip rangeblock see pioneer courthouse square for an extreme example of this blp this one is obvious especially for unsourced fancruft usually this is for articles that are continually getting edit warred about the genre of a band or the rumor that someone won the latest season of survivor or pretty much any article related to wrestling mma the squishy stuff if an article is super stable compare diffs to 'cur' no productive changes over last edits or n months and the ips never have anything to contribute the last one is really the sticking point in the recent history of vanadium just looking to the th or so i see two repeat offender ips and a couple of random ones the repeat offenders should be warned and blocked for a short time if they haven't been blocked before if it were was me i'd feel comfortable semi protecting the article for days maybe a week if i was frustrated finally generally the semi protection ramps up in length so a common pattern i use is days weeks month months months then indefinite each time it should come unprotected and show big problems with ips as an aside i didn't mean for this to be so long and apologies if you know all of this i tried to cast it as a personal opinion because it somewhat is and i'm being so verbose because you are a new admin congrats of course and i'm hoping it helps without coming off condescending heh that was a lot of rambling my apologies