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Possible Duplicate:
New Users Adding Answers to Answered Questions

Maybe around 5? Low enough to not prevent better solutions, but high enough to stop "thank you" answers and some spam answers.

P.S. I'm suggesting an addition to protection, not a replacement.

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marked as duplicate by Jeff Atwood May 14 '11 at 5:49

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

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    Questions can already be protected by moderator and high rep users which has (roughly) the same effect. – ChrisF♦ May 11 '11 at 21:27
  • @ChrisF: I realize that; I'm suggesting an addition to protection. – Hello71 May 11 '11 at 22:04
  • Edit that into your question - it will potentially make it a better question. – ChrisF♦ May 11 '11 at 22:05
  • I think this is an excellent idea, because the only way I can see someone posting to an answered thread is to answer something better or more thoroughly, which a new user may or may not be able to do anyways. – cbroughton May 11 '11 at 22:09
  • How big is the "thank you"/spam problem? Anyone got any numbers? – hammar May 11 '11 at 22:12
  • We have such a system already, it's called "protecting" a question. Proposals on automatically protecting questions can be found here, here, here, and here. – Cody Gray May 12 '11 at 3:47
  • @Cody: ahem "P.S. I'm suggesting an addition to protection, not a replacement." – Hello71 May 12 '11 at 20:15
  • Right, I didn't mean to imply that you were suggesting a replacement. The second part of that comment is the important part. Essentially, what you're proposing is equivalent to the other proposals that have been made to automatically protect questions that have an accepted answer after a certain number of days. The links are to duplicate questions. The first sentence was just clarifying why they use different words to describe the feature request than you do. – Cody Gray May 13 '11 at 2:51
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I'd say no because I've seen on numerous occasions where a first-time answer is a new user who comes in and has a very good answer to share on an existing question that may have an accepted answer, but one that is still relatively poor. The worst thing we can do is not allow someone to answer a question when they have a good answer to contribute, and this has the potential to do that.

Rather than open ourselves up to the possibility of denying quality answers, I'd say we should stick with relying on the community/moderators to clean up the not-so-quality answers.

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  • +1, and let me add: Old questions with accepted answers may be an excellent entry point for new users with quality answers in their sleeves; they can take all the time they need to compose a nice answer, without being pushed by others posting new answers in the meantime. – Hendrik Vogt May 12 '11 at 14:31
  • All of this is covered nicely in the answers to the duplicate questions I suggested in a comment. Hard to imagine why the OP disagrees about them being duplicates. Still good to have it reiterated though, I suppose. – Cody Gray May 13 '11 at 2:51

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