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This question: What determines the characters in the end?

protected by LessPop_MoreFizz 10 hours ago

This question is protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site.

Someone posted an answer just now:

answered 9 mins ago

Aceron
1

They have 1 rep, I thought Protected disallows this?

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  • 1
    Great question...
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 14, 2012 at 15:17
  • Maybe they had the page open for these ten hours? If "protected" works like "closed", then you can still post if you started the post before the status change.
    – Oak Mod
    Commented Mar 14, 2012 at 15:29
  • @Oak Even if you have the page open when the question is closed, your answer will be blocked if you wait too long.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 14, 2012 at 15:34
  • 1
    Maybe "15k-user protected" is different from "mod-protected"? @Anna How long? I remember a similar issue (answer on a closed post) coming up on MSO a few months ago and it was a couple hours between the closure and the post.
    – Matthew Read
    Commented Mar 14, 2012 at 15:36
  • 1
    @Matthew No, there is no difference between the two forms of protection. Since protection does all of one thing (prevent sub-10 from posting), it'd be weird to have a difference, anyway.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Mar 14, 2012 at 15:49
  • @MatthewRead Don't know the exact number. I'm pretty sure we're trying to close that "grace period" window as much as possible. I know some of my answers have been blocked within minutes of closure.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Mar 14, 2012 at 15:58

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Looks like we never enforced the protected question restrictions on submission – we just didn't show the answer editor for low-rep users on protected question. I guess that's usually enough, except for when

  1. either a protection-blocked user figures this out (if they know what they're doing, it's obviously easy to circumvent this)
  2. or the user had opened the page before the question was protected (and thus still got the editor).

In this particular case, despite the fact that there are several hours between protecting and answering, point 2. actually is what happened.

From the next build on, the protected status will be enforced on answer submission as well.

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