What a load of self righteous crap. Somebody comes here and asks how to do a simple thing and everybody here tells him wrong to want to do it. Just because something isn't an issue to you doesn't mean it not an issue to somebody else. Yes locking the screen is an answer - but it may not be the best the answer because somebody might not remember.

I also had the same issue which I've now solved. I installed the modified-hildon-desktop as mentioned elsewhere, and queen beecon for which I made my own widget. I wrote the following script which allows me to switch the editing on and off. It works for me and I've stopped having to rebuild my desktop every couple of days.

#!/bin/sh
j="true"
i=$(gconftool-2 -g /apps/osso/hildon-desktop/key-actions/disable_edit )
if [ $QBW_EXEC_REASON == "QBW_CLICK" ]
then
if [ "$j" == "$i" ]
then
echo "Enabled"
gconftool-2 -s /apps/osso/hildon-desktop/key-actions/disable_edit -t bool false
exit 1
else
echo "Disabled"
gconftool-2 -s /apps/osso/hildon-desktop/key-actions/disable_edit -t bool true
exit 0
fi
else
if [ "$j" == "$i" ]
then
echo "Disabled"
exit 0
else
echo "Enabled"
exit 1
fi
fi