I want to prevent proportional editing on certain vertices. Maybe I'm searching for the wrong word or phrase. Limiting editing to a certain vertex group would help. Masking also gives me no search results. I tried locking vertex groups, but it does not disable editing its vertices as expected.
The only answer you find is hiding, yet hiding is not a solution. It is -- by design :) -- making parts of the mesh invisible. For example if I want to close an eyelid I would need the lower lid to be visible yet not affected by editing the upper lid. So hiding is a workaround if you duplicate the whole mesh, but is there a solution?