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I have noticed that questions are sometimes protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. In order to answer those questions, you must have earned more than 10 reputation on the site.

But what if a new user has managed to gain more than 10 reputation in a single day, and then tried to post this kind of answer?

Shouldn't we make the rep requirement for answering protected questions even higher? Say 50 rep?

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    All we're really stopping are drive-by users and spammers. There's no magic reputation level at which someone's answers are guaranteed to be good. Or at least, we don't know that number yet. Maybe 500k. Let us know if you find out! – Cody Gray Aug 5 '11 at 5:36
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    @code thanks for editing my question. And if I knew the answer so why I asked it......;)....Just in my opinion 10 reputation is very low reputation to stop spamming. – avirk Aug 5 '11 at 5:57
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You could argue that about any amount of reputation; 50k users can still post terrible answers, it's just less likely. 10 rep is enough to stop random drive-by users who know nothing about the site from answering (e.g. if a post is linked off Reddit or some other link-sharing site)

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    I often catch a bit of criticism for protecting things that find their way to Reddit. The problem is, every time I elect not to protect a post that made it to (Reddit/Digg/Stumble Upon), I end up regretting my decision. – Tim Post Aug 5 '11 at 5:52
  • @Tim: I fully support protecting things that find their way to Reddit. 10 reputation is a completely trivial amount to gain; it can be done within literally a few minutes on a site as big as SO. I have no idea why people criticize you for doing that. If Redditors want to contribute to bikeshed questions, at least force them to contribute content worth an upvote first. – Cody Gray Aug 5 '11 at 5:58
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    @Cody The argument is that we should be capitalizing on the link popularity by welcoming new users. That's great in theory, but it never quite works out to the benefit of the site. Additionally, I would hate to see a potential user that we actually want come from Reddit, see a bunch of nonsensical posts and decide not to spend more time on the site. – Tim Post Aug 5 '11 at 6:04
  • @Tim sounds like you have very bad experience with them. – avirk Aug 5 '11 at 6:07
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You could flag them...

Presuming here that a user gaining 10 rep must have got something right and have the most basic understanding of the system...

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Perhaps there should be some bonus rep for reading the FAQ and completing a Q&A test...they (we) could earn 50 rep and you could set these minimum rep at 50...obviously people can get to 50 rep without it...but some incentive.

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  • I'm not sure if it's possible to maintain enough variances of a FAQ comprehension test in order to block people from just getting +50 and making noise that has to be cleaned up. However, users that another SE site trusts do get a signing bonus. I think we really want people to have actual experience using the system before the more 'irritant prone' features of the system become available to them. – Tim Post Aug 5 '11 at 5:49
  • @Tim thanks for clearing my doubts as I read all page of FAQ but no bonus I got. – avirk Aug 5 '11 at 5:57

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