8
When we (users with enough reputation) protect questions, the standard text talks about "low quality answers", and it's a frequent thing that is done with very old questions which are resurrected to the front page either due to a new answer (like yours in this case) or because the question was linked offsite.
These scenarios tend to lead to many low-rep ...
6
Protection racket
Your own list illustrates how pointless this sort of proactive activity is: in most cases, few or no new answers were posted regardless of whether the questions were protected. Indeed, the most-answered question of the lot was immediately protected.
It's not the raw traffic that creates the problem. It's traffic coupled with a question that ...
5
This is by design:
Users with 10 or more reputation can answer a protected question. However, the +100 account association bonus is ignored for this check, so you must have earned 10 or more reputation on that specific site to answer a protected question
Related
Auto-protect questions that get more than N answers from new users in a 24-hour period
The ...
2
What happened is that two of the people answering got fairly quick upvotes on their answers. Enough to go over the 10 rep requirements.
At that point, when a new answer comes in, those are excluded.
This is working as designed - may need tweaking though.
1
Looks like this is a PEBKAC interface error. My mind read "you do not have" when it says "you have" I guess it just didn't occur to me that I'd be getting an alert saying I can do something :)
1
Your arguments look sane; let's just try it. As of right now...
...Authors will be warned when adding an answer if there are 5 answers already on the question. (also, comments scoring < 1 will be collapsed by default)
...It'll take 5 answers from new users in a day to auto-protect a question (unless at least 3 are deleted).
...A moderator flag will be ...
1
There are two deleted answers on the question. The later one is complete nonsense, and I'm guessing is what triggered the protection.
That said, I do agree with you the protection here was a bit premature. Protecting a question goes against our promise that asking and answering is completely free and requires no rep. It's a last resort tool for questions ...
1
I think it may have to do with the protection/unprotection by a diamond the first day; see the revision history. This may have blocked the auto protection from kicking in.
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible