Hi James,
Thank you for the suggestion with the detailed explanation.
I understand why you need locking feature because I have the similar issue myself.
I guess that you don’t like the last modified date of old notes to be unexpectedly updated because that causes note list order to be messed up if you set it to sort by date updated.
In v4.7.0 beta, remembering sort & order of note list per view (all/notebook/tag/status/pins) is supported, which allows you to set sort order for each notebook.
So, you can set the order of your journal notebook to date created.
It keeps the note order even if you accidentally changed an old note.
Does that solve your issue?