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I have 101 reputation, but I can't make an answer to How do you add a Windows environment variable without rebooting?

Is there any other requirement to answer protected posts? The thread tells me: "To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site."

When I signed up for the site it told me: "You've earned a bonus 100 reputation because we trust you on other sites on this network"

It seems that the wording in this message is wrong if earned reputation is considered different from the 100 reputation given.

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    Gotta d/v this. The message specifically says To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site. You haven't earned 10 rep on this site, you have earned rep on other sites in the network and 100 rep was given to you on this site because of that.
    – MDMoore313
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 15:44
  • "You've earned a bonus 100 reputation because we trust you on other sites on this network"
    – iopq
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 19:59
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    I agree, SE should really change the wording on that comment, because it's slight inaccurate as we see.
    – MDMoore313
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 20:02

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This is by design.

Protected questions are not answerable by folks who haven’t earned at least 10 reputation from activity on the site where the question resides.

On a related note, do you really think you have something to add to that question that is both new and useful? Something everyone really should ask themselves before answering any question, in my opinion, but especially one with so many answers as it is, and one or two really good ones.

And, keep in mind that any answer you give is going to be basically ignored because of its position below all the higher voted answers, unless it's really spectacular, so that's something else to consider.

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  • Yes, the actual answer is buried in the comments, and is not the "accepted" answer.
    – iopq
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 18:32
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    @iopq Which comment? Adding an answer, which will be ignored for its votes count, and that is already there as a comment isn't a great solution to that situation, either.
    – HopelessN00b Mod
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 18:35
  • The comment that says "Just installed Scala on my PC but the PATH did not update; presumably the MSI did not broadcast the WM_SETTINGCHANGE message. I added a dummy SYSTEM variable i.e. CHANGE_TO_UPDATE=z, that I update to trigger the WM_SETTINGCHANGE message - problem solved" is the one that solved my issue. I've upvoted the comment but it's not even close to the #1 comment.
    – iopq
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 18:37
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    @iopq The KB article linked in the accepted answer does, in fact, contain a method to send a WM_SETTINGCHANGE broadcast message, which is the same thing that the process outlined in the comment does, just in a slightly different way. It seems to me like it should be a comment on that answer, rather than a new answer, and it's also a lot more likely to be seen as a comment on the accepted answer, that it would be as an answer of its own, below all the other ones.
    – HopelessN00b Mod
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 18:47
  • That's not useful, you have to write a program to do it. I don't even have a compiler on this box. The other workaround works from the UI, you don't have to write code. That's a completely different use case.
    – iopq
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 19:37
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    I agree, it's the same answer at its core @iopq, just adding more information, which is what comments are for, and it's at the OPs (the one who wrote the answer) discretion if they want to edit their answer to include the information. If, for example, there is another way to answer the OPs problem, for example by using powershell to run some hidden cmdlet, then that would warrant a separate answer. For reference, answers that do nothing more than restate an existing answer (which usually is just an attempt to gain rep) are frowned upon and usually have the opposite of the intended effect.
    – MDMoore313
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 20:15
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    @iopq I'm not especially inclined to do so, as I have other things that need my intention, but given the whole PowerShell <=> .NET thing, I bet it would be fairly easy to pull off that code snippet inside a PowerShell script.
    – HopelessN00b Mod
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 20:39

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