Allow people to answer protected questions if they have earned at least some amount of combined SE rep

Question

The purpose of protected questions is, according to the message presented on such a question, "to prevent 'thanks!', 'me too!', or spam answers by new users." The more verbose "Protected questions" privilege page agrees on the purpose. And the FAQ question says this is why protected questions exist:

Some questions are protected because they are expected to attract either spam or users -- often new users -- who may mistake the site as a traditional forum, posting "noisy" answers such as "Thank you" or "This worked for me" or "I'm also having this problem".

Considering this, shouldn't a user be able to answer protected questions if they have gained at least 10 rep on any stack exchange site? If they've already demonstrated one site that they are familiar enough with the SE Q/A format to not be a drive-by useless answerer, shouldn't that confidence in them carry over to other SE sites?

Or maybe at some level of combined SE rep this restriction should be waived. I find it silly that at 15k+ combined network rep, I'm unable to answer a protected question on a SE site I've just started using.

Answer 1

Ol' Pops is on the right track - the original intention of the Protected status was to block non-answer answers from drive-by users:

We needed this because some of the more popular Super User questions attracted a lot of noise from random drive-by users who didn’t understand how our system works — users who helpfully provided so-called answers like “thanks, this worked for me!” or “I have this problem too, can anyone help?”

At one time, the "association bonus" made this a non-issue for folks who were already familiar enough with the system to garner 200 points on at least one site. But last year, the check was changed to ignore that bonus - you must have earned at least 10 points on the site where you wish to answer in order to post an answer to a protected question.

This actually makes some sense: even though Protect was originally intended simply to prevent the worst of the non-answers from getting posted, in practice it's often used on questions that have simply garnered a lot of answers - the implicit message being, it probably doesn't need another one. It's still considerably less drastic than locking the question.

Yes, it has the unfortunate side-effect of blocking answers on those rare occasions where someone with plenty of experience on one site jumps onto another one with a great answer to an already-popular question - but this is always the down-side of Protect; I got an email just yesterday from someone new to our network who wanted to post an answer to a Protected question, with every indication that he was an experienced expert in the subject matter and did not plan on posting a non-answer. Blocking him served no more of a purpose than blocking you would.

The real solution here is to avoid over-using Protect. Certain individuals seem to think it's needed preemptively on controversial questions, closed questions, etc... If you see it being applied to a question where it serves no purpose - or if you simply have a great answer you can't post because of it - flag for moderator attention and ask them to review.

Otherwise... Post an answer somewhere else, and one up-vote will remove the restriction. Frankly, if you can't do that, it's hard to make the argument that you should be posting on a Protected question anyway.

Answer 2

As the OP says, protection isn't about a site's topic. Protection is about preventing "answers" that just say

thanks!

and

"I too have this issue any solution"

Every network site has the same policy about not using answers for content that doesn't answer their questions, so it seems reasonable to use "network rep" for this.

Answer 3

I don't agree that just because they've earned 10 reputation somewhere that they're familiar enough with the network to avoid protected questions everywhere.

Answer 4

Rep is a measure of a community's trust in a user, not just SE's confidence that they're not a spambot. I don't think any community should need to trust a user based on the fact that they've met the bare minimum requirement on another site.

Someone who hasn't participated in one site should have no reason to expect that site to trust them, either. A single upvote on an answer to a non-protected question is not a high bar; if they're really going to contribute productively then that should be a ridiculously easy requirement to meet.

You haven't given a reason why this should change. Yes, maybe a certain level of rep on another site is a strong indicator that you're not a spambot; I concede that point. But why is the current way things work a problem? I don't think it is.

Answer 5

One problem of this approach is that, on meta sites down votes/low reputation doesn't mean bad Q/As since downvotes here often mean different opinions. You get low reputation and be forbidden to answer protected questions, etc?

For example:

User 1: Have 1 Q/A on a meta which earns 1 upvotes, then user 1 can answer protected questions.

User 2: Have 10 Q/A on a meta and 9 Q/A get 1 votes each and the other one get -50 downvotes just because have a difference opinion and the reputation get reset to 1. User 2 can't answer protected questions.

So absurd.

There could be a channel to apply or the privileges on meta. When you apply, you provide links to your old Q/As and some others can approve the privilege base on your history Q/As.