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A few days ago I noticed another password resetting question and had an immediate urge to protect it to try and stem the almost inevitable spam answers these things attract. The FAQ says I need 15K, which I have, and I do recall seeing the button previously but it's no longer visible to me.

Is this a bug? Have I been a naughty boy and had a right removed? Or perhaps there's been another change which hasn't been reflected in the FAQ?

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Reset to default
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Per the official rules, https://serverfault.com/privileges/protect-questions

Which questions can be protected?

Any question, even a deleted question, can be protected and unprotected, subject to the following restrictions:

  • The question must be at least a day old
  • A user can unprotect a question protected by him or herself, but not one that has been protected by someone else

So you have to give the spammers a day's head-start before protecting.

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    Thanks, although that kind of defeats the purpose a bit.
    – John Gardeniers
    Commented Dec 8, 2011 at 2:44
  • @JohnGardeniers Yeah, just a touch.
    – sysadmin1138 Mod
    Commented Dec 8, 2011 at 7:12
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    @JohnGardeniers New users do still need a way to generate rep to get past the initial hurdles. Questions are protected because they're common or simple problems, generally. These are the perfect questions for new users to cut their teeth on. I agree that it sucks that spammers get 1 day, but the tradeoff is minimal compared to potentially taking an opportunity away from a new user, imo.
    – MDMarra
    Commented Dec 8, 2011 at 13:56

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